A number of years ago, I wanted to send Dad’s polar bear back home – to the family homestead in Alaska. Dad had shot the bear in 1958 when we were living in Tanana, Alaska, where he was a physician at the Alaska Native Service Public Health Hospital. He’d gone to Point Hope with an Inupiat Eskimo employee and guide. After Dad died, the bear had come to live with me – in Colorado.

I thought I could just have the bearskin hitchhike on one of my brother’s driving trips back north. At the last minute, I’d checked with the Canadian border crossing. They didn’t care if it was driven through Canada – as long as it didn’t remain in Canada. The United States customs was much stickier. They immediately hyperventilated because it is illegal to shoot polar bears – now. They demanded proof of when it was shot, where, and by whom. I replied that I could send them my book, “Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor.” They required extensive paperwork – which would take six months to approve – if it was approved. I gave up. The polar continues to live with me.

Having this drama as a historical backdrop to relocating animals, dead ones, from the Lower 48 back to Alaska, I was concerned about relocating Mom’s Moose head, which over the years had wandered from Alaska to Kansas to California.

Mom’s Moose

I mentioned this to my California cousin, Don Gaede, because Mom’s Moose was presently at his mom’s house. He happened to mention it to our relative, Jim Gaede. Jim Gaede suggested the Doerksen fruit truck that goes to Alaska every summer. Don relayed the suggestion back to me. I contacted Matthew Doerksen, Ben Doerksen’s son, in Alaska. He thought the predicament of traveling across the borders with a moose head was amusing – and actually a non-issue. He said to contact his Uncle Dan Doerksen.

I emailed Dan and Wanda Doerksen. “This will work,” they said. (Nothing like Mennonite connections.)

Who are the Doerksens and what is “the fruit truck”?

“Over 30 years ago, my brother Ben lived in Alaska and got hungry for some fresh California fruit. We sent him a box of peaches. His friends and neighbors found out about the fruit and wanted some too.

Ben’s Logo

That’s how Tree Things was born. We now deliver to 9 various locations throughout Alaska in a 4-day period, five times each summer. We sell fruit only in Alaska. We do not have a nation-wide business. You indeed are special to us.”

www.treethings.net

After several years of sending a few boxes of peaches to Ben and his friends, Dan and Wanda were taking 50 boxes of peaches to the San Francisco airport and putting them in a container heading to Anchorage, Alaska.  Before long, Ben’s business had expanded to several towns. In 1982, he died unexpectedly. Dan and Wanda continued the business, but with driving an 18-wheeler up the Alaska-Canada (Alcan) Highway five times over the summer, with driving times of four to five days.

That’s a brief history of the Doerksen fruit truck.

Here’s more of the current history-making story

May 6, 2015, Wanda:

Dan is finally really looking at the size of your moose. It is not so much the weight but the size it takes: W-57 inches, L-65 inches, H-51inches. It is the equivalent of 1 ½ pallets.

May 25, 2015, Don:

Great news, Dan came here this afternoon with his trailer, and with the help of Justin, we got the moose crate up on the trailer.

The Moose delivered to Dan and Wanda

June 3, 2015, Wanda:

(morning)

Dan loaded the box with the forklift into the truck and off they went. He was heading to Kingsburg to get berries and somewhere else for peaches. I heard the moose sigh with relief to make the long trip home. 🙂

(late morning)

Dan goofed. He discovered he did not have enough space to take the moose. He drove back to Reedley and brought the moose to the truck yard. He is shocked for miscalculating but we figured the moose was dead and would not mind a little more warm rest. He will leave Wed June 24 and arrive in Anchorage Monday June 29.

On June 29, 2015, Dan and his sister Nadine headed north with Mom’s Moose, surrounded by cherries, berries, oranges, and other fruit. On July 6, my brother, Mark, met the crew in Anchorage, loaded the crate onto his utility trailer, and hauled Mom’s Moose back to the Gaede homestead.

Mark Getting the Moose Crate in Anchorage

Fifty-seven years later, the moose is back in its natural habitat – but most likely needing to reacclimatize after being in warmer climes for decades.

The Moose arrives back home — on the Gaede-80 Homestead

Oh, and there’s a bit more to the story. When Ben Doerksen first arrived in Alaska, around 1969, he looked up my father, Dr. Elmer Gaede. Within short order, Mom had him sleeping under our Gaede-80 Homestead roof, rather than in his pick-up, and she was feeding him tender moose roasts and cauliflower straight from her garden. In November 1974, Dad delivered Ben’s son, Matthew, in Soldotna. The Doerksens and Gaedes go way back, helping each other out. Those are the stories that bring the true smiles.

Memories & Meals — Cookbook, History, Stories

“My mother made potatoes that were boiled and then fried. They were so crisp!” He describes the food, and then shares the memory of his mom whistling hymns while she bustled about the kitchen.

My daughter tells me, “Mom, I made Flat Pancakes for supper.” I can hear her smile through the email. We’re both thinking the same thing: my mom/her grandma, brightening our kitchen during her visits each January; flour-dusted hands, wispy hair, and a flowery apron.

Food memories journey across oceans and generations. In 1996, I toured the Molotchna Colonies, in the Ukraine, where our Mennonite, Gaede family had lived until the late 1880s. We were served Rollkuake with watermelon. The fried fritters tasted as flat, and familiar, as those I’d eaten during my childhood in Kansas and Alaska. In 2014, I still enjoy them, with watermelon juice squishing out my mouth, and flashbacks to my young daughter in her apron, wanting to flip the sizzling dough strips.

How does one separate food from memories? It’s as slippery as separating egg yolks and whites. And why try? Not unscrambling these elements, adds to the flavor.

I have three books that make me salivate – and reminisce.

• My Grandma Agnes Gaede’s cookbook, from Reedley, California. Grandma collected recipes in a brown spiral Golden West theme book with narrow rule, purchased for 49 cents. Pasted and taped inside are recipes cut from magazines or handwritten. I find icebox cookies, sponge cakes, coffeecakes, chiffon pies, meatloaves, and casseroles. Nothing is gluten-free, salt-free, fat-free, lactose-free, or sugar-free.

• Memories & Meals, which I edited, is the history of Deer Creek Christian Camp near Bailey, Colorado. The history is mixed generously with recipes. There’s Hot Chicken Salad served at Ladies’ Retreats, Sloppy Joes at Kids’ Camps, and Norwegian Coconut Cookies for Ski Camps. When Deer Creek recipes are served at gatherings of previous camp attenders, laughter and reminiscing burst out between mouthfuls.

• The Three Boys. This book was drafted during a family Pheasant Festival. For decades, Penner men and boys (now young women) have flocked to the Penner farms in Western Kansas for November pheasant hunting. Within the Colorado Penner group, no one has wanted to prepare the birds. Since I grew up with wild meat in Alaska, all fingers have pointed at me.

Saving and re-telling the stories

During one such event, I recorded stories repeated by my late husband and his two brothers about their childhood in Kansas and Colorado. We didn’t want to lose the comical recollections of the three boys in a stock tank looking at cow’s faces under the water, rolling their over-sized Dachshund down the stairs – to see if he’d land on his feet, and bicycle crashes with trombones. The final chapter featured the last meal my children had with their Grandpa Penner – when he ordered pie – first.

As dessert to the main course of stories, at the end, I added The Three Boy’s mother’s recipes for German Chocolate Cake, New Year’s Fritters, Cream Cheese Brownies, and so on. Some of her handwritten recipe cards were copied directly.

What can you do with food memories and recipes? You can use them for amusing holiday conversations or for collecting into your own memory-and-meals family or friends book.

Questions to ask around your holiday table. (Include all the generations for a spicier blend.)
– What is your favorite friends/family homemade food? Why?
– Who makes it? Only grandma? A group of the women? The men at the grill? _______who always experiments?
– Where did the recipe come from?
– Have ingredients changed over the years? Or due to availability? Or because of preference?
– What’s the story around the recipe? Where were you when you first tasted it? Who else was there? What was the occasion?
– When is it typically made? Holidays? Camp-outs? Ski trips? When _____comes to visit?

More suggestions for gathering memories.
The Three Boys http://www.prescriptionforadventure.com/threeboys.html

(This was first printed in “The Country Register” (Kansas), Oct/Nov. 2014)

Fur Rendezvous, Anchorage, Alaska, 1956

The 78th Fur Rendezvous starts tomorrow in Anchorage, Alaska, and runs through March 3, 2013. The event started in 1935. I’d love to see the Outhouse races, Snowshoe Softball, Running of the Reindeer, Great Alaskan Bed Races, Snow Sculptures, Snowball Fight Tournament, Ice Bowling – and more!

My one and only time at the Fur Rendezvous was …a long time ago…..

Naomi, Ruby, Ruth Gaede

(Excerpt from Alaska Bush Pilot Doctor)

Anchorage, Alaska 1956

As told by Elmer E. Gaede

“The Anchorage Fur Rendezvous, held in February, provided more entertainment. Originally a celebration when trappers came to sell their winter’s cache of furs, this annual, ten‑day cabin‑fever antidote attracted crowds of Natives and whites. The hustle and bustle of dogsled races, dog‑pull contests, snow‑shoe races, and fur auctions nearly shut down 5th Avenue. In one of the open lots there was a platform with hundreds of raw furs, sectioned off for red fox, white fox, mink, beaver, muskrat, lynx, and wolverine. ..

…. At the first of the Rendezvous, I bid on the red fox and got two for $5 each. The next day, some of the same quality of fox went up to $20 each. I was told that I did well to bid early since the furs usually sell low the first few days before the buying interest is up. Later, when the buying fever was aroused, the prices would go up.

When the furs were brought in from the cold and into a warm room The odor went up later, too. Some of the furs came from villages where they had been tanned in barrels of human urine… I learned that in fur selection, one needs to use both eyes and nose.”

Ruth and Naomi with fox skins

(Excerpts from http://www.anchorage.net/articles/anchorage-fur-rendezvous)

Fan favorites, such as the Outhouse Races, always draw a crowd. Dog teams and their mushers complete three 25-mile loops over three days. One of the newest events is Yukigassen, a team snowball fight tournament that joined the lineup in 2011.

 Native culture is celebrated in many ways.

Blanket Toss at 1956 Fur Rendezvous

–        The Blanket Toss mimics the Alaska Native whaling tradition. Everyone can have a turn to either jump or grip the (walrus skin) blanket’s edge while tossing others as high as 20 feet into the air.

–       Arts and crafts are displayed.

–       Tribal regalia, customs and culture vary greatly between Alaska’s distinct Native cultures. The Multi-tribal Gathering celebrates their diversity, joining cultural performers and visual artists in a one-day extravaganza

Fur Rendezvous – 1956

Fur Rendezvous – 1956

For more information, including the schedule of events and travel specials, visit http://www.furrondy.net/ or