Why, Why Alaska? - A book by Florine Hirsch
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Home Sweet Home |
Florine working the
Henry-Henry
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 We built a root cellar to store home
canned foods and root crops. A pit is built below frost line in the
ground or inside a cellar to keep the food from freezing. |
 They brought us to the Gulkana River to spear white fish, which are small, mild flavored fish weighing less than two pounds. These fish are smoked or used for bait when ice fishing. To spear the fish, we wore quite an outfit. First we wore hip boots because we slowly walked upstream in the two to three foot deep water of the Gulkana River. A Coleman lantern was wired to a board, then hung around our necks, leaving our hands free to carry a pail and a three-pronged spear. |
 Burbot
look like large pollywogs. They have large heads, long tails and are
pot-bellied. Their skin feels like a frog’s skin, not like a fish. They
grow up to thirty pounds with an average between five and ten pounds. The burbot is called the poor man’s lobster. Its white
meat has the same texture as lobster meat when boiled in a
solution of sugar, salt, and water and dipped in butter. It
tastes like lobster. |
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The equipment supplies included a water pump, a fifty foot
hose, sluice-box, shovel, pan, pail, gas in gallon cans, twenty-five
foot pipe and check valve. We were also supplied with a garden hose and
a Henry-Henry, which is a four-foot long corrugated plastic drain pipe
split lengthwise. It is used for the final process of separating the
gold from the concentrates.