This will be the only entry in this ‘book’. As I make new friends here, I know there is no background from which to view my entries. A long history at Open Diary and years-long communication with friends there made it unnecessary to do a biography. This is a baseline from which to get some context for my entries here.

Husband and I moved to Skagway, Alaska in May of 1995. We were actively pursuing a move from Wichita, Kansas where drive by gang shootings were becoming commonplace. We sought a smaller town with less crime and a better quality of life. From 1985 to 1988 my father worked for Holland America at their Gray Line bus maintenance shop in Skagway, Alaska. He and mom spent summers there and winters near Seattle, where mom’s twin sister and husband resided. I never got a chance to visit them, but my father dearly loved Skagway and left the job only because mom’s health required living closer to medical facilities. They moved back to Wichita in 1988.

When husband and I decided we wanted to move, the first place I demanded he apply was with Holland America/Gray Line. My father made contact with the head mechanic in Fairbanks, the former supervisor of maintenance who had risen to Vice President, and husband filled out an application and we waited. Husband is an extraordinary mechanic. He had never worked on large buses before, but was confident his mechanical experience with heavy construction equipment and Detroit-Diesel engines would be a good fit.

Husband did a lot of applications to other places, we went on 3 out-of-town interviews and we waited. A telephone interview along with my father’s recommendation (I’m sure) got an offer for the Skagway job and off we went. We sold most furniture, loaded what we wanted to keep in a U-Haul rented at a fantastic price for a one-way from the rental company hub was working for, and headed west. We had no plans for what to do once we got to Seattle for a meeting with the home office personnel at HA/GL. We just set out.

Lots of answers appeared along the way, including how to get our personal possessions to Skagway for free through HA/GL. We spent almost a month in Seattle, visiting with Hub’s sister and her husband who were living in a 16 foot travel trailer in a suburb of Seattle while looking for the perfect property/house to purchase for retirement. It was a blessed visit. We had NO idea before we got to Seattle that the phone number we had was even still good for them. It did all work out most magically, but then when I trust in the Universe, take a leap into the unknown, I am always shown the way.

Skagway is a small town of 801 plus or minus permanent residents at the northern terminus of the Lynn Canal. We are visited from the first of May through the last of September by cruise ships. The possible count of visitors from cruise ships only is between half a million to three-quarters of a million in that brief period. Each day brings from 3 to 5 cruise ships into port. On the ‘big ship days’ which means 5 ships docked, there are up to 9,800 passengers likely to descend on our town.

Our Town is 22 blocks long and 5 blocks wide–that is all the area between the two mountains on the east and west–5 blocks and 21 blocks is all there is room for between the harbor and the mountains to the north. Of this area, the main tourist shopping district is 4 blocks wide and 7 blocks long. This main shopping area is also part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Park and I must say that the stewardship of the Park Service has served this historic gold rush town well.

I sell tours. I sold tours for 5 or 6 years for Klondike Tours and Madame and Greg are the most wonderful, caring people I have ever worked for let alone had as friends. This year, 2014, I will be working for Southeast Tours, Heath and Jamie G the owners. I needed a change as in addition to tour sales the shops I worked in were full of retail merchandise. I ceased to be at all inclined to sell retail so I looked for a change and found it.

May through September is the time most of the locals make money that will last the rest of the year. There are few year round jobs in Skagway. Unemployment supplements through the winter and the annual permanent Fund Dividend checks are distributed to every Alaskan in October also helps get us through the winter.

I love tour selling. I love talking with people from all over the world and arranging for them to have the best their money can buy in experiencing Alaska. The best bang for the buck at $55 a seat is a 2 1/2 hour 25 passenger bus excursion over the White Pass summit and beyond into the Yukon. This is scenic mountain and gold rush history that is interesting and breathtaking. Selling tours is easy for me because I absolutely believe I am selling the best product available. Getting passengers and drivers together, meeting and boarding—sometimes getting tourists to gather on time in the right place is like herding cats. It takes a lot of effort, patience, and a cheerful encouraging attitude.

At 62 going on 63 years old, I am slowing down a bit and after working a 6 to 8 hour day, especially on big ship days, I am exhausted and almost unable to put one foot in front of the other to reach home. Home is a 24’x28’ garage over which is the living area which is 11’ x 28’ space above the garage. We built the garage with the space upstairs in 2000 (I think) intending the upstairs to be a quilting area for me, garage for hub’s vehicle repair shop, and to build a house on the lot at a later date.

Circumstances changed after we erected the bones of the building with Gray Line not renewing Hub’s contract. Finances were very tight, and we had to move out of company housing into this unfinished, uninsulated, garage and living area. We have a ‘paycheck’ house which means every time we get a paycheck, we do something to improve the place. We are almost finished and have some smoothing to do on the sheetrock in the living area and those areas unpainted to paint. Laying down of a wood floor purchased several years ago will complete, for now, where we live.

Hub and I are drawing Social Security now and he has been physically unable to work for about 3 years with his physical condition deteriorating even more this winter with some sort of back problem.

I live in a beautiful place where everyone knows everyone during the winter, and the population expands by 1500 in season with temporary workers flooding every possible spare space to live and of course, work in the many shops open only for tourist season. I love my life, I love my town, I love the quirkiness of the people I know and love here and I have experienced all sorts of ‘odd’ things that I consider normal until I talk about them with my daughter who lives in Kansas, is 43 years old, married, 3 boys, ages 25, 10 and 8. Daughter’s silence or a surprised “WHAAAAT?” signals me that I am talking about something that is strange and unheard of back in what she considers the ‘normal’ world.

That is all for now, a bit of rambling about me, us, Our Town and life as I know it.