EPISODE 187 … All worldly possessions YUKON JOB 1962

EPISODE 187    ALL MY WORLDLY POSSESSIONS…YUKON JOB 1962

NOTE:  THIS SHORT STORY WAS WRITTEN MARCH 10, 2018 DESCRIBING LIFE

PROSECTING IN YUKON TERRITORY IN THE SUMMER OF 1962.   SOME READERS

MAY HAVE SEEN IT BUT I WANT IT INCLUDED IN THE EPISODES .. EPISODE 187.

YOU MIGHT MAKE OBSERVATIONS.  I KNOW THE PICTURE IS TOTALLY SELF 

CENTRED…NARCISSISM.  PLEASE FORGIVE.

SEE IF YOU CAN FIND THE BIG BOX OF HOME MADE COOKIES MARJORIE SENT

BY MAIL.

I MAY TRY TO RETRIEVE ALL THE YUKON STORIES.  THE JOB WAS QUITE AN ADVENTURE.

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ THE STORIES…READ THEM AGAIN…YOU HAVE NOTHING

BETTER TO DO.  

ALAN

From: “alan.skeoch@rogers.com” <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
Date: Saturday, March 10, 2018 at 12:05 AM
To: Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com>
Subject: Alan Skeoch … All worldly possessions YUKON JOB 1962

DUBLIN GULCH CAMP, YUKON TERRITORY, 1962

NOW THIS IS REALLY SILLY…(found in old 35 mm slide)

alan  skeoch

March 2018

Readers  come in all sorts … interested and bored,  large and small, old and  young, critical and open-minded, full of evil thoughts and just plain joyful.  Which are you?

Some readers  might be interested  in this small corner of the universe  in the summer of 1962.   

 It’s a game….see what you can find.

SEE IF YOU CAN  FIND THESE ITEMS BELOW IN THE PICTURE ABOVE

1) Pants…note knee patches  made of medical first aid  tape…only had 1 pair of pants, no time to wash them.

2) Bed…made of light canvas and  metal rods…never lasted long…flat to floor eventually

3) Baby Rabbit…given to me by Moses Lord, First Nations  member of our crew, caught it by  hand, eventually freed the little fellow but meanwhile he

lived in my gum rubber boot in the evenings leaving a few soft marbles each morning.

4) Escapade magazine…must be good article in there on geophysics, else why would I keep it?

5) assorted  soda cans and bottle of  stuffed  olives

6) 2 pairs  of socks drying on my clothesline beside bed…socks were so important…dominated all.

7) 1 bottle of antiseptic…kill microscopic bastards trying to kill me  by slipping in open  wounds chewed  open

bu larger bastards  (mosquitoes,  black flies, moose flies,  deer flies, grand  wasps)

8) A small library including Pierre Berton’s Klondike, Michener’s Fires of Spring, Steinbeck’s East of Eden, 

9) boot insoles drying on top shelf…holes in boots meant water sloshed around most  days, body heat boiled  my  feet, pock marked.

10) Hair brush that was never  used

11) Moose lower jaw bone   (mailed back to Toronto with pair of caribou  antlers)

12) single caribou antler. Moses Lord got me  a  full rack to send home by freight truck.

13) Scottish tam at top. When I started teaching my principal, Mr Ellis, said to me privately “You will never get ahead

if you continue to wear that tam.”   Wonder what he would have said if he saw this picture?  Probably say “I knew it!…look at him.”

14) Alarm clock…rang at 5.45 a.m. Get up, dress, make breakfast, slather bait for bugs, and be on trail by 7.30 or so.

15) PICTURE OF MARJORIE…WE WERE ENGAGED…SHE GRADUATED U. OF T 1962, I DID SO IN 1961,  POST GRAD YEAR 1962

16) bottle of Eno’s fruit salts…for upset stomach.  Food we ate made that necessary.

17) candle in wine bottle…

18) Huge box of cookies sent as a  Care package from Marjorie who was back in North Bay.  She also sent chocolate cakes.

19) Mosquito lotion

20) Camera case and  pile of magazines…maybe scientific journals but more likely the other kind.

21) Diary on top of stump table

22) My brief  case in which was wrapped my idea of Yukon gold (see 23)

23) my Mastodon  Tooth found in a gold  sluice box  in Dublin Gulch.  It was a great teaching item when  presenting the theory

of Beringia…where Asiatic  people migrated to North America 10,000 to 20,000 years  ago when the Bering Sea was a vast dry plain feeding  Mastodons,

Mammoths and other giant now extinct creatures.  Must have been  a good lesson for some student stole the tooth the first  year I taught high school.

24) Alan Skeoch, 23 years old, bearded,  post-adolescent, Rover Scout, potential groom, Geophysical Field  Man. future teacher…immature… reticent to give up

the life of luxury implied by this photograph .   Marjorie took the view that ‘if you can’t beat them join them’  and  Marjorie Joined our  crews on jobs

in North Ontario at Paradise Lodge and Wart Lake in 1963 and a short and final job at Merritt, British Columbia.,in 1964 where the local mining executives thought

she was a hooker. 

25) Prospectors rock hammer

  26) plank under cot to prevent collapse

27) gold nuggets … tiny … really just gold dust which I dropped on black electrical tape and  mailed to Marjorie.   Should do a story about

our discovery of gold.  In 1962 gold sold at $35 an  ounce and was controlled by he Canadian government.  Today it sells at around $2,000 an ounce and the Gold Standard

has been abandoned.  A friend  in Dublin Gulch had  a slab of  gold as a kind of knuckle duster if he was ever robbed.  His cabin was amazing…Mammoth tusks and bones

leaning against the walls…and those huge teeth.

WHAT A WONDERFUL LIFE.

ALAN SKEOCH

MARCH 2018