The Buzby Family -- An Alaska Pioneer Family

Faces of Alaska: Elton Buzby - page 2

We were kind of fortunate growing up. We had a very close family. I had three brothers and two sisters, and a mother and dad who had gone through many experiences and who had a great interest in everything. But the family was most important, and anything they knew was available to you for you to accept or reject.

One of the most fortunate incidents when we were kids is that we had three very great teachers, and they came to our home to teach us. Professor Hoppe played the violin and piano. He had taken up a homestead here in Fairbanks right next to us after many years of sailing and wandering, and we met him at that time. I took eight years of music and altogether twelve years of instruction from him, coming into our home once a week. And there was another chap, Dr. Britt, who was a physicist and interested in archeology as a sideline. Then there was Professor Pfiffer, a physicist, who was the third remarkable man.

You've got to be interested in all sorts of things to stay alive.

Why, I remember Professor Hoppe doing experiments with mulches and playing music to his plants, and he grew wonderful stuff. And there's another acquaintance we have who will never plant a seed without asking the Lord to bless it first, and his plants always grow. We haven't scratched the surface of what there is to know.

And we learned quite a bit from all the people we were around. It's kind of like handling money in some state agency in Juneau, it's awful difficult if some of it don't rub off on you.

Later on we went outside for a bit, and I went to school out there for five years. Then we cut loose. I was about seventeen. We were going to take part in the railroad colonization plan. They were going to start a creamery here and make cheese, and colonize along the Alaska Railroad. So I took jobs in several creameries there in Oregon, learning everything from how to make cheese to how to build the boxes to put them in. Then we got together a carload of stock to bring north.

We came by steamer to Alaska. It was an awful trip. They were supposed to have accommodations for the cattle under the colonization program, but there were no preparations. We had to hire a bunch of people coming up on the boat to help us water the stock as we had to carry small buckets of water from the crews quarters to where it could be lowered down the hatch to the cattle. It was a nightmare. Then, through political action, the railroad program fell through, and with it the idea for a creamery, in favor of the colonization of the Matanuska Valley.

All this happened while were enroute with the stock. When we got off the boat, we found that it was going to cost us an additional $5,500 to bring the cattle into Alaska, the cheaper rate being discontinued when the railroad colonization plan was abandoned. Then we had to get the cattle home. The problem of water started again the moment we got off the boat in Seward. It was winter time and the railroad gave us two stock cars with slats. Good to see out, with lots of fresh air, but colder than hell. And we couldn't get the railroad people to stop at a spot where we could water. It took us three days to get from Seward to Fairbanks with the stock, and I've been against regulators and bureaucrats ever since.

There were many experiences then that made a fascinating life for me. There were always opportunities in Alaska, and there's more opportunities today than there's ever been. It's just very few people take advantage of them.

We had a dance band one time. That was in the early thirties. We'd play once or twice a week because that was about all people had to do here. Nobody had much money. It was during the depression, and everybody just tried to be happy and have as much fun as possible. We got a few good musicians together, and ended, up with an eleven-piece band that put out music you couldn't help but dance to.

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