Old Alaska built on promises to repay

Many Americans found themselves longing for yesteryear, when bankers were humbler, financial instruments simpler.

While digging through an old box in the garage, I found a "financial instrument" that's simplicity incarnate.

It's a check, written on a page my Dad, Fabian, ripped out of a notebook. It's dated Oct. 2, 1946, and made out to Northern Airways for five dollars.

The airline knew from experience my Dad had the money -- and understood the First National Bank of Fairbanks would not balk at improvisation. Don't have a check? Well, this was the era of counter checks, and if you can't find a counter check, go ahead, use plain paper. I have seen checks from gold rush days the payer modified by scratching out the name of the issuing bank and scribbling in another.

In old Alaska, most Alaskans rarely kept cash for long. The cash they obtained working for wages, trapping, mining or selling fish paid the debts they accrued on credit. Credit was available at banks, stores and trading posts, although lenders were fixated on the danger they might not be repaid. Ida Martin of the Tolovana trading post on the Tanana River told Fabian:

"Every fall it's the same old story. Trappers come in here looking for credit, with big tales about all the fox tracks they see on the sandbars, up and downriver. The Big Year has finally arrived. All they need is a hundred or two for an outfit and they are a dead cinch to make their stake in the winter. If you haven't heard the story before, you will probably go along with them. Next time you see them, it will be probably late in the winter, if ever, and if you can catch up with them, you are sure to hear some whopper of a hard luck story. 'The foxes all died off or moved away' or 'I come down with the rheumatism or stomach trouble or got hurt somehow and laid up for months.' Any old damn lie you can imagine, but you won't hear what you been waiting to hear: 'Lady, I been hopin' to run into you so I could pay you in full.' "

Bars allowed steady customers to run up tabs. A burglar broke into a Fairbanks bar and stole but one thing -- the tab. Gamblers improvised when they didn't have cash. I've heard of poker games with muskrat skins as chips.

Here's another common territorial financial instrument. The letter asking a friend or a relative for a loan. It's more or less a form letter, with the writer warming up by inquiring about the recipient's health and family, apologizing for not writing in (fill in the blank) years, briefly describing a misfortune that left him broke, and springing the question: Can you send me (fill in the blank) bucks? Oh, I left out the concluding sentence: "You know I'm good for it." Not all the supplicants mastered spelling. More than one promised he was "gud" for it.

Alaskans who actually had money weren't afraid to carry around cash. Successful miners often had thousands of dollars in their pockets. Fur buyers who went into the villages after muskrat, beaver and marten carried boxes of cash. A fur buyer flying to a village yelled to the pilot over the roar of the engine "Go back to Fairbanks." The pilot asked why. "Because I left $10,000 on the bed in my hotel room."

Many years ago, my Dad and I flew into a gold rush town that died. The elements and fires had destroyed most of the community, but the bank vault remained standing. We walked into the vault and discovered the floor covered with bank records and cashed checks.

Fabian told me to pick up the checks and put them in a box. He said they were "valuable." Actually, they had no value at all. Except to somebody interested in the names on them -- the names of men and women who built early Alaska.

Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com.