Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Anchorage's pioneers may well have thought so.
It's not inappropriate to label "pioneer" all the non-Natives who lived in Anchorage before the modern era, before World War II. This was a small town then, fewer than 2,500 people. The roads out of town weren't built yet, and travel in and out of the territory was almost exclusively by steamship. The railroad ran south to Seward and north to Fairbanks. Communication with the Outside was by U.S. mail and by telegraph, except in emergencies, when the military's radio-telephone could be used, at very high cost. There were no military bases; a small contingent of the U.S. Army Signal Corps ran the telegraph and radio.
By today's standards, Anchorage was remote, and isolated.
E-mail, cell phones and texting have taken away our sense of remoteness, and Anchorage then probably didn't feel as isolated to the pioneers as we might think; they, after all, had made a conscious choice to be pioneers, to go live on the edge of civilization. And telegraph and radio-telephone were all the technology available then. Still, their letters home, preserved in archives and attics today, reveal a rather grim determination to assure the folks back "home" that the pioneers here were not just fine, but also quite normal.
People remote and isolated from their cultural roots need familiar symbols and rituals to reconfirm their identities, to help them remember who they are. It's no surprise, then, that the community made a big deal out of the Christmas holidays. All the preparations, such as baking, buying presents, staging parties and dinners, designating a Santa, lighting the community tree, were as important to the pioneers as to their relatives Outside. They provided a sense of connection, and equilibrium.
Imagine what the little town was like in 1938, the last year before war enveloped Europe. Commercial establishments lined the main street, Fourth Avenue, and a few side streets. The principal employer was the federal Alaska Railroad; many others worked at the various federal agencies created by the New Deal to ease the Depression. Some names from then are still familiar today: Dr. Joseph Romig was the mayor; Bob Bragaw, who worked for the unemployment compensation commission, volunteered as city clerk.
Festivities got into full swing Christmas week. The Anchorage Women's Club sponsored the cutting of the annual tree, which they installed on the lawn at the newly constructed City Hall on Fourth Avenue between E and F streets, and lit on the night of December 17. On the 19th the Presbyterian Church presented a Christmas cantata titled "The Manger of Bethlehem," and on the 22nd the Junior Chamber of Commerce Glee Club gave a concert at the Empress Theater, open to the public, ending with an audience carol sing.
Many stores stayed open late hours in the week before the big day, having hired extra sales clerks; the post office also brought in extra hands to sort the volume of cards and parcels with which it was all but overwhelmed that week. On Christmas Eve, Saturday, the city held a party for all the children in town at the Elks Hall, followed by a free movie at the Empress, and a visit by Santa. Planners urged moms to take advantage of the free time to do their last-minute shopping.
There were needy in the town, and the newspaper carried a notice that gifts for deprived children would be distributed at the fire hall on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day dawned unseasonably warm, a boon to those fortunate youngsters who had new bicycles to test. The radio station played carols most of the day, and even the railroad suspended operations so employees could spend the time with their families. Generally the day passed quietly.
In the week after Christmas, the hotels reported their rooms were filling up with reservations for Saturday night's New Year's Eve celebrations. For those concerned, the newspaper promised to carry results of the New Year's Day football bowl games.
All of this assured the pioneers they were not cultural anomalies but rather, perfectly ordinary Americans leading normal American lives, enjoying a typical American holiday, however much they might miss the folks back home.
Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Steve Haycox
comment