What’s in Mrs. Hale’s Receipts for the Million 1857?
1207. Apple Fritters.– Pare and core some fine large pip pins, and cut them into round slices. Soak them in wine sugar, and nutmeg, for two or three hours. Make a batter of four eggs; a table-spoonful of rose-water; a table spoonful of wine.
Growing up in the Alaska
Roy Taylor’ said that his childhood veered into unknown territory when his family moved to the Alaskan frontier before it became a state. For the last decade, he has been writing his wilderness stories, some of which have been published in anthologies. I’m happy to say that these stories have finally been compiled in the wonderful, The Road to Courage Now retired from a forty-year career as a vascular surgeon, he enjoys hiking, gardening, cooking, and keeping up with his grandchildren.
What’s The Road to Courage About?
Set in the mid-twentieth century, The Road to Courage is narrated by a young boy as he journeys with his family to new and wild territory on the Alaskan frontier, a land where life’s priority is survival rather than comfort. This memoir sketches a portrait of his complex family-courageous, committed, flawed, and yet resilient-and, through a series of terrifying adventures, traces the unbreakable bond between the timid narrator and his fearless, fun-loving brother.
Excerpt from a later piece
Curves on the Alcan
Careening off the car ceiling, I startled awake, only to slam the back seat, bouncing like a pinball before everything stopped. My limbs were twisted into the space in front of the back seat. A chorus of moans broke the silence. Moments before, after wrapping in a blanket, I had slipped into an exhausted slumber on the back seat of my brother’s ’63 Bel Air while he took his shift driving. I craned my neck for a glimpse out the side window. Trees. Nothing but trees. This couldn’t be good.
It was the fall of 1971, and the previous morning, James and I had driven out of Homer, Alaska, on our way back to college in Illinois with a planned stop in southern Minnesota, where my girlfriend lived. A ten-day, 3500-mile journey, including a thousand miles of Alcan Highway gravel.
The summer in Alaska had proven profitable. James earned top wages running the shrimp cooker at the cannery on Homer Spit. I raked in an unbelievable pile of cash crewing on a shrimp trawler on Kachemak Bay, a significant wad of which I had spent on a diamond ring.
The first night, around 10 pm, we pulled into a parking lot at Tok, almost too tired to eat the sandwiches Mom packed for us. While digging through the trunk for our tent, we paused in awe. Perhaps the most spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis I have ever seen filled the northern sky. Curtains of pink, green, and violet surged across a star-studded backdrop. Maybe for James, it was the energetic atmosphere. Perhaps for me, it was the magic of the Northern Lights glowing softly in the depths of the diamond I had unconsciously pulled from my pocket.
We looked at each other. “Wanna keep driving?” we asked in unison.
The eastern sky was lightening as we crossed the Alaska/Yukon border and stopped to pick up a Canadian hitchhiker on his way to Whitehorse.
By then, James and I had settled into a rhythm, two hours driving, two hours sleeping. While, in theory, this sounded reasonable, we hadn’t factored in the infamous Alcan S-curves or the need for even young men to rest. The Alcan had been constructed during WWII as a military highway. To protect convoys from bombing attacks, the road slithered to and fro through the woods and muskegs like a giant snake every few miles. All three of us were asleep when the brown Bel Air, in an unwonted display of autonomy, attempted to straighten an S-curve at 50 MPH. Surprisingly, when we finally stopped bouncing, no one was hurt, and the car, built like a tank, was fine. James managed to maneuver us back onto the gravel road.
Now thoroughly awake, the hitchhiker chattered nonstop for eight hours until we dropped him off in Whitehorse.
I won’t claim that we drove the Alcan in record time, but sprinting from Homer to southern Minnesota in four and a half days was no small feat. Though the journey remains a blur, I recall my girlfriend’s mother’s consternation when we showed up at their door road-ripe six days early. I also won’t forget Nancy’s poorly masked amusement while watching me squirm beside her on the couch, desperately digging in my too-tight Jeans pocket for the ring. In a new setting, the diamond still sparkles on her finger 53 years later. And when the lights are low, hints of pink, green, and violet glow from its depths.
Was that race down the Alcan worth it? I thought so at the time. She did say yes. Though still grateful for guardian angels and tolerant in-laws, from the perspective of the years, I’ve learned not to take either for granted.
The Road to Courage launches
If you live in the area, Ray is launching his memoir on Sept 9 at 6 PM in the Village Books Reading Room. Go to https://www.villagebooks.com/event/litlive-roy-taylor-090924 to sign up. If you can’t come, you can find more tales of the Alcan and the Far North in Ray’s memoir, The Road to Courage, the story of his family’s journey in 1954 from civilization to the Alaskan frontier in search of a new life. https://roytaylorauthor.com
