by Peter Twitchell
Each year I go back to my childhood and remember how life was in the 1950s. I remember I would go with Dad to the Standard Oil Depot in Bethel, which was located below the PHS Hospital not too far from Grandma Hately’s and what used to be their Fox Farm.
Dad ran up the ladder to the office and paid for the 2-55 gallon drums and gas tank containers he would take on our salmonberry picking trip down to Kialiq to pick our winter supply of berries for Grandma Hannah, Juanita’s berries for herself and her mom Mary Kohl, Mom’s sister.
I called her Auntie Mary every time I saw her and when she worked as a teller at the First National Bank Alaska next to Bergie’s Restaurant across the road from Jimmix’s Air Service adjacent to the Kuskokwim River. The majority of the single engine planes were on floats.
Ap’aq, Joe Sallison Air Service’s plane was on wheels and he would land on the current Bethel Airport Road back before there was an airport.
The airport for wheeled aircraft was simply a strip of road from where Tom and Maggie Kinegak had their home to where Lucy Beaver’s home was and where Walter Larson’s home was.
Dad kept the gas tanks in the boat and brought 2-3 black bear skin rugs, tent and wooden barrels to the boat and we were off to pick berries on July 22nd.
The black bear hides that were skinned were from black bears that ate only fresh berries in the summer and never rotten fish or rotten animals. The bear skin rugs were for my Grandma Hannah and my mom Sarah and Juanita to sit on so they wouldn’t get cold.
My Dad never hunted brown bears because they eat anything.
I sat next to my Dad in the back of the boat where he was driving the Evinrude 40 horsepower outboard motor.
This was in the Fifties before cultural and modern development ever came to our beautiful Bethel, back when life was quiet and simple.
