More great photos from the deYong Archives (that’s the uptown name we’ve given to the cardboard boxes and plastic crates stored in our backyard shed). During the Great Depression my dad literally flipped a coin to determine if he would head north to Alaska or south to California when he left Montana in search of work. Unfortunately, for him, it came up heads. He packed his bags and headed for the Land of the Midnight Sun. It’s not like Alaska was more prosperous than the Lower 48, but there is always a market for anyone willing to perform hard physical labor, something he relished. They imported cheap Chinese labor to build the Trans-Continental railroad in the 1860s, but I guess all labor must have been … Continue reading Somewhere in Alaska, circa 1936: Working on the railroad all the live long day