11. Crafts

One of the classes I took was Arts and Crafts. It was designed o to encourage our working knowledge of our Native arts. They even provided ivory. We had some gifted students. One was Wilbur Walluck who was adept at ivory etchings and ink painting. Others were good ivory carvers. A Thlingit student explained to me how to recognize Thlingit totem poles by eye and mouth shapes. I couldn't carve ivory. To m surprise it took more than just being an Eskimo to be a carver. Skills learned from father to son and an Eskimo aura were needed. Rather than seeing me gaze out the window with a piece of ivory in my hand the instructor gave me some paper and told me to stand drawing - anything. So I took the paper and started drawing army tanks. The question of my Eskimo identity was reaching alarming proportions. Could I perhaps become a brown skinned white man in Western Gi¥ilatéen2 Civilization?

Every spring the students were treated to an all day picnic at Halibut Point which was about five miles from Sitka. Though there was a road going out there we were ferried there by boat. I boasted I could beat them and to prove my point I rented a bicycle and was waiting for them at Halibut Point. Each class had their own picnic day and a measure of success was proved by how many girls got pregnant. This competition was started conceived and relished by the students themselves and I watched silently as Permissiveness became a part of growing up for Eskimos and Indians — a wrenching of parental control by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and a harbinger of how things can be in a white man's world. The surge birth and surge of rock and roll music was easy to blame.

A fun place to go was called Ships Service. It got its name or continued it from when it was a Naval Base. Ships Service was combination store and fountain service. I was introduced to ice cream and Coca Cola there. The juke box was beautiful and played 78 RPM records at a nickel a play. I enjoyed drinking shakes in the booth and watching the dance called jitter bug. I was too timid to try myself.

Saturday nites were dance nites at the girls’ gym. We had a student band which belted out big band music quite well. I was always the wall flower. Sometimes I could dance the slow ones. Then one night before the dance I decided to join the boys who were drinking wine. It made me feel, good. Suddenly my shyness disappeared and I found I could do the jitterbug and better yet I could dance with the pretty girls. Before too long all the girls were turning me down. My personality change was intimidating. Worse yet I was reeking with wine. But I had found the magic elixir that empowered me to approach pretty women. I never had to be shy again.

Shop classes were great. In woodworking only hand tools were used at first. Then came the table saw and the woodworking lathe. I think I would have made a good cabinet maker. In the metal shop we learned arc welding and the metal lathe. The final test was to make a 10" ball peen hammer with two pieces of metal which I did quite well. .

In my junior and senior years I spent half days learning a trade which I never used much. I worked in the dental laboratory. Dentists from all over Alaska sent their prosthetic work there and I learned from actual experience. Full and partial dentures were made. I learned the names of all the teeth and even their surface names. In later years I would surprise dentists by telling them where I had cavities.