MARCY OKADA: So, my name is Marcy Okada. I work for the National Park Service. Today is July 20, 2022, and we’re here with Karen Brewster, who’s with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program.

And we’re here interviewing Micah Malcolm, here in Eagle Village, Alaska. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MARCY OKADA: So we’ll go ahead and get started.

KAREN BREWSTER: So, um, since you can hear me, I’ll start with the questions, if that’s ok. So this project, we -- talking to people about their lives here, and hunting and fishing and trapping, and places you’ve gone and used.

But to start with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? You were born here in Eagle Village?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yes, I was born and raised here. Went through the eighth grade in the old village grade school.

KAREN BREWSTER: What year were you born? MICAH MALCOLM: January 17, 1943.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. What was it like growing up here? MICAH MALCOLM: Well, I really love that old village, and I wouldn’t trade it for any other place.

And well, it was -- it was a lot of fun living in the old village. Especially when we had a school teacher from Indiana. He taught ’54 to '56, and that was the most fun I ever had in school, you know, the two years he was here.

And at that time, the school teacher stayed in the village for two years. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Then they moved to a different village. And after he left, May, never had fun like that anymore.

MARCY OKADA: Who were your parents, Micah? Your parents. KAREN BREWSTER: What were your parents’ names?

MICAH MALCOLM: My mother’s name is Sarah Malcolm, and my dad is Edward Malcolm. And he -- I guess he was born and raised somewhere around Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And him and his brother, they trapped south of Fort McPherson. And then after so many years, him and his brother followed that one river south, southwest into Alaska, and they came out at a place right -- Eagle Creek. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MICAH MALCOLM: On the north side of the river here. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: Just a couple miles above the old village.

And then they, when they come here to Eagle, they either work on steamboats or, like my dad did in 1937, he worked for mining company down in Coal Creek.

And then after the river freeze up in November, they go back to Fort McPherson and go trapping. That’s where they made their living. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then he -- I guess that’s where I get everything. Him and his brother, they make their own things, like dog sled or dog harness and all that.

And if they make snowshoe, they have my mom or his brother’s wife weave it for them with caribou hide.

KAREN BREWSTER: The babiche? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: From caribou, not moose?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, the moose, they -- is -- they’re too thick to make them -- them -- weaving this. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, snowshoe. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: So they use the thinner caribou hide. I used to watch my mom make those. They call it babiche. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: She used to cut it into about, maybe 3/16” of an inch strip. She don’t cut the -- she don’t cut the stick out. She leave it, uh -- she leave right on the skin, and then she start another one until she get a whole bunch of them.

And then sometimes everything that she’s sliced to make babiche would all be all one piece.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. She left it connected at the top? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Or one end? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: Because, well, whatever -- whenever she weave a snowshoe, she cut off what she needs, and then soak that one. So that she don’t have to soak the whole skin.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ah. Smart.

MICAH MALCOLM: I used to watch everything she does. And like I said, I was the only one she wanted me to help her when she tanned moose hide or caribou hide.

I used to go out -- I used to go out in the woods and get her the rotten spruce wood. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s what she used to tan moose hide.

There’s my other older brothers sitting around the house. She don’t ask them to help.

KAREN BREWSTER: You were the helper, huh? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Ever since I was seven years old.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you know why she picked you? MICAH MALCOLM: I don’t know, but she did.

I probably could tell some lady how they could tan, cut the hair off and all that out of moose hide.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. I’ve heard that they use the old, rotten spruce for the fire to make the smoke, right?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, spruce wood. I used to get -- I used to get that for her, too. Uh, just not very far from our house, I used to go out and get it. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MICAH MALCOLM: For her.

KAREN BREWSTER: And did somebody teach you how to find it? MICAH MALCOLM: No. She did. KAREN BREWSTER: She did? Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Not very far. Just right across the road. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: There’s the woods, trees, start about, probably about 150 feet behind the old village and then you’re in the woods. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s where we get -- get willow and willow for making birch bark baskets. I get birch bark for her, too. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then, I help her make -- I help her stitch birch bark basket. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And eventually, I learn how to make birch bark baskets. MARCY OKADA: Your mom? MICAH MALCOLM: I know --

KAREN BREWSTER: Where was your mom from?

MICAH MALCOLM: (spreading out map) Uh, they used to be right here on this river, there used to be a Native village along here someplace. Charley River. KAREN BREWSTER: The Charley River, yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Here’s Coal Creek. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, the Charley River.

MICAH MALCOLM: And that’s where she’s from. And then -- and then when the military started that Fort Egbert here in Eagle, the Native -- and then they had this store, general store, here in Eagle. Them Native from Charley River, they’d come up on the steamboat and buy whatever they need from the store. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And then they go back.

And I guess the first time my mom came into Eagle was when her mother was packing her around. At the time, they -- they used that wool blanket, and then that long scarf about that long. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: She -- she tied that scarf together and uh, she wrapped that blanket only on one side of the baby, and somebody put it on her back.

And then she -- she, they put that scarf around under the baby. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s where they pack that baby around.

That -- that first picture of her in one of those things. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And at that time, the Native people when they come up, they -- they had a village down below the city, just above Eagle Bluff.

KAREN BREWSTER: At Mission Creek there? MICAH MALCOLM: Just above Mission Creek. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: The old village wasn’t -- wasn’t here at that time.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. And what was your mother’s name, last name, before she got married? Do you know? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh.

KAREN BREWSTER: Your grandparents’ name? MICAH MALCOLM: See that, I know it, but like I said, I forget. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Sarah. Stephan. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MARCY OKADA: Steven. Steven. MICAH MALCOLM: You know the one with P-H. MARCY OKADA: Oh, yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.

Do you remember your grandparents’ names? MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: That way, they probably don’t even come to Eagle.

But I did see her, my mother’s mother in -- Somebody took this picture. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s my grandma. MICAH MALCOLM: I didn't see her husband.

KAREN BREWSTER: But you didn’t know them? MICAH MALCOLM: No. It was -- She was -- she must’ve been at least 30 when I saw her picture, packing my mom around. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Downtown. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Somebody took her picture.

KAREN BREWSTER: And then on your dad’s side, your grandparents from your dad, did you ever know them? MICAH MALCOLM: No. But my dad -- I don’t know this -- I seen a couple of birth certificate of him. I got it, and one of them said he was born in 1890 -- uh, ’94, I think. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Like I said, him and his brother, my uncle, they didn’t go to school, but they made a living.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Ok. And do you have brothers and sisters? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. I had, I think there was eleven of us. Eight boys and three girls.

One of them, the younger girl, still living in Fairbanks. She got her own house. And one of the best things she did was when she was married to a guy from Fairbanks, a Native guy, he said they bought a house in Hamilton Acres. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: She still got that house. KAREN BREWSTER: Yep.

MICAH MALCOLM: All she does is pay for the fuel. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s about all.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. So what are your first memories of going out hunting and fishing?

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, 1949, I was six. In springtime, springtime, like the last part of April and first ten days of May, my brothers and all some of the other guys from the village, they go duck hunting. There’s a lake about a quarter of a mile from the old village, from our house. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: In the springtime, like May, it gets some water in there, and they call it Big Lake. And the Native got the Native name for it, and uh --

Well, we only go out there about, just when it start getting daylight, that’s when they start flying. Even if you shoot, some still come in and land. So you could get -- well, it was enough for a big family to --

KAREN BREWSTER: Would you go out there for a lot of days in a row? MICAH MALCOLM: Well, one time in 1960 -- ’67 or sometime around there, I went there for 26 nights. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

MICAH MALCOLM: We had to -- to -- you know, so you didn’t have to buy anything from the store. The only thing we have to buy was that, uh, my mom get me some shotgun shells. It wasn’t very much, but still, it’s about maybe three-something for a box of 25. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. MICAH MALCOLM: Shotgun shells.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember how many ducks you shot?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, like I said, the most was, um, three of us got 76 ducks one night. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

MICAH MALCOLM: And -- but most time, by myself, I would get probably about thirty, forty of them. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

MICAH MALCOLM: And she use it all. Her brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, he was living by himself. And we give her some. Give him some. And some other older people around the village.

KAREN BREWSTER: And you said -- Does Big Lake have a Native name? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. I don’t -- did I tell, I don’t speak my -- KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, there -- The Native name’s spelled M-O-N, and then maybe capital C-H-O, something like that. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Mon Cho, something like that? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, Mon Cho. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: That mean, Big Lake. The first one is -- in Native it’s "lake." KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, mon is lake? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. Cho is big? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, cool. Thank you.

MICAH MALCOLM: I -- like I said, I lost my hearing in one ear, 1950’s. And I can’t hear the exact pronunciation of the word. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: So I say it the wrong way, and my brothers, they kind of get a kick out of it and laugh about it. So -- so I just quit speaking. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. MARCY OKADA: Mm. KAREN BREWSTER: But you know how to spell it. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: If you see it in writing. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: That’s good. Yeah.

So you went to school here in Eagle? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, six years. Started school when I was ten years old. 1953.

The reason I was -- started school at ten years old? There was no school in our village. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: But there was a school downtown.

And my brother, he was born in ’30 -- ’36, so he was -- him and another guy from the village, they’re both same age, they went to school down there. And every day they had to walk three miles to town, three miles back.

They don’t use no dog team in the winter, because it’s used to haul wood and all that. And because of -- because of the cold weather during the winter, they missed so many days of school that one of them graduated from the eighth grade in 1956 when he was 20 years old. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And like I said, you can’t send little boys down three miles five days a week during the winter season. KAREN BREWSTER: No. And so what, until you were ten -- wha --

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, up until 1953, um, there was a lady with her family, her husband, and I think she had three kids. They came -- the road, the highway (Taylor Highway), opened in May 1953. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: I think at the end of May ’53. And this family from Fairbanks came over, the lady and her husband and three kids. And I think that lady -- well, uh -- and before that, the three biggest families in Eagle Village, Bertha’s family.

KAREN BREWSTER: The Paul family.

MICAH MALCOLM: And uh, the Juneby family and the David family. They’re big families. They all live in Coal Creek year-round. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Because the head of the family worked for the mining company in the summertime, and then in the winter, he cut wood for --

Three of them, they cut wood for the mining company all winter. And I think that part was a better deal than working for the mining company in summertime, because in the wintertime when they cutting wood, as long as they were cutting wood, if they cut wood, like in November, December, January, February, March, and for maybe five months, the mining company paid for their monthly food, and they ship it to them on the mail plane.

I think that was better than the money they’d get for the wood they cut.

KAREN BREWSTER: So what was it like living over here in the village in those years?

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, there was -- since there was no other kids me and my brother’s age, uh -- like the others like my brother I just told you about, he’s way older than us.

And then my brother and my sister, they had -- they were kids. Nineteen -- they were born ’49, '50. They were younger than us, and the others were older than us, so just me and my brother.

And then in the summertime, if -- if we’re needed toys to play out in the dirt, I made my own toys. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Even when I was seven years old, I make a copy of, you know, those bulldozer with the blade in front? KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: I make a copy of those when I was seven years old.

KAREN BREWSTER: Out of wood? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, well, my dad did some carpentry work, and he left -- when he died in 19 -- June ’48, he left some carpentry tools, like saw, hammer, measure tape. I use that.

And then when the store sold kerosene gas for gas lamp or gas for cars or river boat, those gas came in five-gallon square can about that high.

And two of them came -- came in a wooden box that long, that high. And there were no 50-gallon drums that time. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MICAH MALCOLM: And the store had a lot of them, those boxes. And I think they gave them away. I know we always get them from --

People make shelf out of them when they stack it on top of each other. And then we use it for chair seats. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s what I make them -- KAREN BREWSTER: That’s what you used to make your toys? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Or even carve a rifle. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. MICAH MALCOLM: I did all that when I was seven years old.

KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. Yeah, those are Blazo boxes, right? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah. Kerosene boxes. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, or Avgas sometimes? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah. And then --

KAREN BREWSTER: I have some as furniture. I have some as a table. (voices in the background, someone comes into the room) UNKNOWN: Hello. MARCY OKADA: Hi. Are you looking for someone? UNKNOWN: Oh no, we’re just outside using the shop. MARCY OKADA: Oh, ok. KAREN BREWSTER: We’re recording in here. UNKNOWN: Oh, sorry. KAREN BREWSTER: So yeah. Thanks.

Um, so how did you learn how to do that carving? Did you --

MICAH MALCOLM: I don’t know. I just did it. I didn’t watch anybody doing that. I just did it myself. And well, I carve airplane, copied 'em. Airplane flying, I copy those, just carving them.

And then the very first time when the road opened, those big truck with the long trailer in the back with a cover. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: That they deliver stuff in in the city. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: One of those came over the highway, brought some supplies for the store, and I made a copy of that. And it was about -- the back end was about that long. KAREN BREWSTER: Like a foot long? MICAH MALCOLM: With the front about that long. And make a bumper on there, and -- and tie a string to it and pull it around.

KAREN BREWSTER: That was your toy? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. MICAH MALCOLM: And.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, now you make those beautiful dog team carvings. You’ve carved dog teams?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, there’s one over -- did you see that one in the -- KAREN BREWSTER: In the council office, and one at the Park Service. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, last time, I don’t know how many years ago, I sold, I think two villages to Doyon in Fairbanks. You ever go there? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: I don’t know where they got it, but they bought two from me. And I think the last two they bought, I think it was $3500. KAREN BREWSTER: For a whole village? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

And I remember the last one, I brought it to the -- to the building, Doyon building. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And it was in a box. I had rope tied around the box to carry it. And they bought it.

And they took that box into the office, I guess, and they said come back in a couple hours and we’ll have a check for you. So in two hours I went back, and they got the check, and they still never get --

KAREN BREWSTER: They hadn’t opened the box yet? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. No.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. So your -- your father died. How old were you when your father died? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, he died June of ’48. I was five years old.

KAREN BREWSTER: Five years old. So was your mother alone, or did she find another husband? MICAH MALCOLM: She -- she's alone. Uh, even though I was a little guy, she found another guy, I probably wouldn’t like him.

KAREN BREWSTER: So how did your family survive without your father there? MICAH MALCOLM: Well. KAREN BREWSTER: Eleven kids, that’s a lot. MICAH MALCOLM: What? KAREN BREWSTER: Eleven kids. MICAH MALCOLM: No, they -- KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. MICAH MALCOLM: Just me and my brother was the only kids. All my other --

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, they’d grown up and left? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah.

And for a while, I guess my mom, I don’t know. She probably got some kind of assistance, but all my brothers worked. I had three of them in the 40’s.

I had three of them spent arm -- got drafted for service in World War II. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: Three brothers.

Two of them were in the combat zone in the Aleutian Islands. The first brother who got drafted October ’41, he got to be a radar operator. And -- and when he got through with his training, he went into the combat zone and stayed there almost a year. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And all that time, my mom didn’t hear anything from him. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And she tried to tell the other two brothers about him.

And even though my two brothers know where he was at, they didn’t tell her. Not until the combat was over in the Aleutian Islands. Then he came back to Fort Richardson. That’s when -- that’s how it was.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. But was it hard for your family without your father there to hunt and fish, trap?

MICAH MALCOLM: My older brothers do all that. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: There’s four of them.

MARCY OKADA: Is Matthew -- MICAH MALCOLM: Huh? MARCY OKADA: Is Matthew Malcolm your brother? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. MARCY OKADA: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: He got married in 1950, so then I had three other brothers who -- After he left, you know, they helped my mom with a lot of things. They all worked for mining companies in Coal Creek.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. Did you guys, um, go out fishing on the Yukon? MICAH MALCOLM: I did when I grew up, but in the early '50s, like ’51, '52, '53, my mom would -- my uncle, Bertha’s grandfather. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: He had a fish camp couple of miles below the city down here. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And my mom spent some time working to help them cut fish. And then when the salmon run was over, fishing for salmon was over, we move back to the village, and they give her -- they give her some dried fish for -- from their net. So that’s how we got our dried fish.

And then, later on in September when my brothers get moose and she smoke -- smoke and dry some. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Or later on in November to January when my couple older brothers go trapping south of downtown Eagle. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: When they get caribou, that’s -- they bring it back, you know, with the dogteam. That’s what we used, because the store only sold canned SPAM, canned corned beef, canned wieners.

And that’s about all the meat there is, but then they sold -- the closest thing to something big, fresh, is that slab bacon. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, slab bacon. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And I wish they still sold slab bacon, because I used to like to cut -- slice it thick. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And fried up and then -- now when I do that, I fry bacon, and then instead of regular pancake flour, I got blueberry pancake flour. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Fry that up with jelly. I don’t use syrup. Man, you ever try that? KAREN BREWSTER: No. MICAH MALCOLM: You should try it. KAREN BREWSTER: It sounds good. MICAH MALCOLM: I get blueberry pancake mix from Fairbanks.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So you make the pancakes in the bacon grease? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh. KAREN BREWSTER: You cook ’em in the bacon grease in the pan? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, back in the '50’s, but now you got the Wesson oil, about that much in the bottom. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And use that.

KAREN BREWSTER: But it was probably good with bacon grease. MICAH MALCOLM: Uh. KAREN BREWSTER: It was better with bacon grease? MICAH MALCOLM: I mean, I never did try it. MARCY OKADA: Oh. MICAH MALCOLM: That --- what -- KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: I think it’s different than regular cooking oil. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Whenever I -- whenever my mom or them other ladies bake bread, I never see them fry bacon or pancakes. I mean, pancake or flour -- bake bread. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: They use bacon grease. They use regular -- KAREN BREWSTER: Crisco? MICAH MALCOLM: Well. KAREN BREWSTER: Used to be Crisco. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, the white -- it’s white. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, in a can? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, can is about that around. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: That high. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s what they used. KAREN BREWSTER: That’s what they used? MICAH MALCOLM: They -- they hardly used bacon grease for frying. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, you can’t get that slab bacon. That’s why.

So you had start -- talk to us about your own hunting and fishing, when you grew up. Where would you go to go -- like where would you go moose hunting?

MICAH MALCOLM: Um, you know where the old village is? MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm. Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: About -- you see that hill straight back? MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: On this from -- from -- from that hill over this way, there was all down through that lower end of the airport, all that is flat. They call that "Flat." "The Flat." And that’s where the Native people go to hunt moose in the fall.

And then, before like, say, if somebody get a moose there about first of September or something like that, when it’s still kinda hot, warm, then the whole village go back there and divide all that meat up. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MARCY OKADA: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then they pack it in. I used to pack moose meat when I was ten years old. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. MICAH MALCOLM: It's not a big pack, but at that time, you don’t buy them packsack in the store. My mom and them other ladies make ’em out of white canvas. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: You don’t see no plastic bags or anything.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. And then you hang the moose to age? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, like me, back in middle '60’s, get moose on the Flat, and my mom would hire the storekeeper downtown.

He got a little -- they call it bulldozer. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Little smaller than the other thing.

He got a sled made out of logs about that around. KAREN BREWSTER: A foot round? MICAH MALCOLM: The front of the logs be about that round. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And two -- two logs from here to the -- the wall. KAREN BREWSTER: Ten feet? Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And they make it about that wide. KAREN BREWSTER: Five, four feet.

MICAH MALCOLM: And cover it with boards or plywood. And up in front, they drilled two holes for the cable through there, about from here to the wall, that long. And then put cable clamps on there.

That’s what the storekeeper use with his little bulldozer. Go out and they load a whole moose on that thing. They drag it in even when there’s no snow.

KAREN BREWSTER: So he made kind of a sled out of those logs? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, I got one sitting in front of my house right now, right where my garbage dump is.

But I got two -- two frame on a poles about that around. KAREN BREWSTER: Three inches round? Four inches round?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, and it’s about that wide and four -- maybe four and a half feet high. KAREN BREWSTER: Three feet wide. MICAH MALCOLM: And on both ends of the sled. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And eight feet apart.

And I got -- I marked the top four feet on both sides, and that -- you could put four feet wood on there, up to those things, that be one cord. KAREN BREWSTER: That’s your wood-hauling sled? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, I made it this summer because even though I got two side-by-side four wheelers. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: In case they break down, and I can have the village -- if I cut wood, they can haul it with that sled. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And I got two side-by-sides. One of them’s out there. KAREN BREWSTER: I saw you drive up in it. It’s got a nice little cab on it and everything. MICAH MALCOLM: I made that out of plywood. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: You can look at it if you want. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, keep you nice and warm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, I drive it -- Because of my hearing, I never got a driver’s license, but I did learn how to drive in summer of 1959.

That preacher spent summer at church downtown, him and his wife. They came from New York, and they were about 21 years old that time. They taught me, and Benny’s brother, Isaac, how to drive, ’59.

And then -- and then, uh, in the '50’s, like ’56-'57, the road -- they work on the highway here. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: In the summer time. And they work on that road from downtown to the old village. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And couple of times, they stop behind our cabin, and us kids went back there just to be around there. And they got their equipment running.

And then the foreman comes around to give them some more instruction. I noticed that I can’t hear the foreman telling them what to do. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: I can’t hear that, so -- so when I first registered at the job service in Fairbanks in December ’62, after you took that test, I don’t know what kind of test they call it.

Uh, just I guess they have some kind of test, like that, you know, when you go in the military service. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And after I finished my test and they interviewed me, first thing that lady told me was that, you -- what -- What you should be is a heavy equipment operator.

KAREN BREWSTER: (laughs) Because you can’t hear? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And I told her that -- I told her just what I told you. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. MICAH MALCOLM: I can’t hear, uh, people talking when they got the -- KAREN BREWSTER: When -- a lot of noise, yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Car running. So that’s why I didn’t -- I didn’t get my driver’s license.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. You also probably didn’t go in the military? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. I didn’t even have -- I didn’t register until I was 19 years old, but I guess the FBI knew something about it, so they didn’t -- they didn’t --

KAREN BREWSTER: They don’t want you if you can’t hear. MICAH MALCOLM: Ah. I guess they didn’t go after me for not registering. KAREN BREWSTER: Yep.

MICAH MALCOLM: And later on, when I started working at 18 years old, I didn’t have no ID card, so I go to the Selective Service in Anchorage, uh, Fairbanks, and get that card from the military. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then I -- so I stop in the -- I stop in the FBI office for some reason. I told them I can’t hear out of one ear. I had an experience with them, too, FBI. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. In 1964, I was living in Fairbanks, and I was living with an old non-Native guy in south Fairbanks. And he drank a lot.

He was 64 years old, and he drank straight whiskey every day. He don’t get drunk, but he drank it every day.

And then after a while, he had to go to the hospital. And then, three, four days later, his son came around to the house. He said his dad died at the hospital.

And he wanted me to stay. Stay there and watch the house for a while. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: So I did that.

And then before he went home, he asked me, "Do you have any money?" I said, "No." He said, "You need any?" I said, "Yeah."

So I think he gave me something like eleven dollars. You know, six one-dollar bills and a five-dollar bill. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And after that, I went downtown on Second Avenue, and I stop at -- You know Co-op? KAREN BREWSTER: The Co-op? Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. I went in there. At that time, I smoked cigarettes. I don’t smoke now. I went into the store and bought a pack of cigarettes, and I think I paid for the cigarette with a dollar bill.

And I was standing outside the Second Avenue, there’s glass door inside, glass door on the outside. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. MICAH MALCOLM: I was standing inside. And here come -- I was having a cigarette, and here come a well-dressed tall guy with a hat, white shirt, tie, suit coat, suit pants, dress suit. Pull out his wallet, came up to me, and, you know, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And I look at his badge, and he said, "Where did you get that money to buy cigarettes?" I told him where I got it from, and I knew where the guy lived, and they told me to take them out there.

And so they did. I don’t know. And then without going inside, they brought me back to that house. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And they didn’t do anything to the guy, but that guy later on next day came around and said, "You shouldn’t tell them guys where I was living."

KAREN BREWSTER: He was wanted, huh?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, I don’t think he did anything, because he was around the next day. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: Somebody was making money at the time in Fairbanks. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, they thought it was counterfeit? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh. Yeah.

So we’re wondering if you did any hunting, fishing, trapping, anywhere in the preserve, this green area.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, well, you know, I'll get to moose hunting. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: And starting in 1956, November. From Eagle down to -- Eagle to Summit. You know where Summit is? KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: We hunt caribou there. You can still drive it with a car. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And nobody had a car in the village, so the storekeeper take people from the village out there. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And we spent all day out there, and we’re only allowed to get one caribou. Uh, because he could only haul about, oh, whoever hunting and maybe about eight caribou. And he had to drive two of them. That’s how we hunted up to American Summit.

And then, 1959, there was no caribou at Summit, but there was caribou in Jack Wade (Jack Wade Junction, MP95 on Taylor Highway, junction with Top of the World Highway). KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: The same thing, the storekeeper took people down there, and I went down there, and I got one.

And since then, uh, we either hunt caribou on Summit or anywhere out to Polly Hill, Jack Wade. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. Out the highway? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Or out the road. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: So there’s no caribou anywhere else over here in the Preserve? MICAH MALCOLM: Well, right now or last winter they hang around Charley River. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MICAH MALCOLM: So that's too far to go, you know. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, is it too far?

MICAH MALCOLM: And then -- and then, uh, there were no caribou in the Taylor Highway starting -- uh, I think -- I think they knew that it was gonna have deep snow this winter. Maybe that’s why they didn’t hang around Taylor Highway. They were all around Steese. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Or Charley River.

KAREN BREWSTER: They went to the Steese side? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Well this -- I hope it’s different now. We could sure use it.

And we hunt moose on the Taylor Highway, too. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, you do? MICAH MALCOLM: You have to have a car to do that.

I remember I went out with a guy and his family. He was working for the highway.

I went out with him out to Forty-Mile River. Coming back, we shot a moose September 12, 1959. I even remember those dates.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, you remember it exactly.

MICAH MALCOLM: Him and I split the moose, and then later on, he got another one for his family.

KAREN BREWSTER: How come you remember the dates so well? MICAH MALCOLM: I don’t know, but I do.

KAREN BREWSTER: So do you ever go moose hunting somewhere out on the rivers? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And me and one of the guys, he don’t live in Eagle, his name is Fred Stevens. Back in the '70’s, he was chief of Eagle Village, and since he was the chief, he get money, put the guys to work doing something.

And he hired me because I could do carpentry work. We make those cabins for the village people out of three-sided logs. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, and then in 2006, they all got destroyed in the flood at the old village. KAREN BREWSTER: 2009?

MICAH MALCOLM: That -- that was the second flood. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, there was a first flood? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: It's 2006, there was a flood. And then again, 2009.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. So the -- part of the village was flooded in 2006?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah, it all flooded. I mean, uh, I think -- I think even that first flood, I lost a house in there. But I had this new house before that. I was -- I move up here, I think, 2002, I think.

So the only thing I lost was that -- I had a couple houses. I sold -- I sold one to my niece, and that got destroyed in the flood.

Uh, this last flood, I got a picture of the last flood at home, and it's made out of 2x4 and plywood. And it was in the -- along the river bank of the old village.

And when the ice came up over the bank, it push that house. It smashed it down, and it pushed it about maybe 100 yards on the south side of the road. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And in the house, I had some table like this, about this big, I think. And I had a -- I think I had a cup of water, uh, cup of water sitting on that table when I left.

And when that ice moved that house, smashed that house, but the table was still up, and all that broken over the table, that cup with that water is still there.

When -- when are you going to leave Eagle? KAREN BREWSTER: Uh, tomorrow. MICAH MALCOLM: Oh, gee. If I see that cup with the water in there, I’ll show it to you. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. It’s pretty amazing. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. That’s why I take a picture of it. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: It never spilled.

KAREN BREWSTER: So in the old da -- in the old village, back when you were growing up in the old village, did you guys have floods back then?

MICAH MALCOLM: No, but at that time in the wintertime, people make water hole. That’s where we get our drinking water. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then during the winter, if the water -- I mean if the ice is pretty thick, maybe that thick.

KAREN BREWSTER: Like ten feet thick? It would get that thick? No, eight feet. MICAH MALCOLM: It would probably get about four, five feet thick. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And if it’s thick, that the older people think it might flood. So before the breakup, we go maybe about a mile behind the old village, up where it’s higher.

We put our tent there and stay there until the river break up.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you remember that -- going up to the -- were there times when the river did flood? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: You guys were safe, though?

MICAH MALCOLM: There’s one thing, 1950, I’m glad it didn’t flood that time. You want to know why? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Um, my mom and my sister and my brother and another old lady, we moved back, uh -- and then some other people moved to a different high place, but all my older brothers, they were in their 20’s, and the other younger people stayed in the village.

Um, uh, and us kids and our mom, we stayed up where it was high. And there was, like I said, I’m glad it didn’t flood because them older -- them older guys got into some home brew and got drunk. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s why I’m glad it didn’t flood. KAREN BREWSTER: ’Cause they would’ve been in trouble? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Wow. But, so that’s how you handled flooding, is you just moved? MICAH MALCOLM: I mean, just for maybe three, four days. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s about all. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. And your --

MICAH MALCOLM: And I enjoyed it. One -- the last time we put up a tent, we put up two tents, and then between there, they facing -- was doorway. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Right between them, about eight feet square was a place they put a tarp over it, and that’s where we put our camp stove and table. About this big. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And that’s where the ladies cook, and that’s where we eat.

KAREN BREWSTER: Nice. Did you ever run a trapline yourself?

MICAH MALCOLM: 1959, me and my older brother did. About ten miles west of downtown Eagle. Before that, they used to -- everybody had dogteam, but since late 1959, uh, people didn’t have any more dogteam.

KAREN BREWSTER: Were there snowmachines at that point?

MICAH MALCOLM: The snowmachine came a little -- the storekeeper got snowmachine that time, but nobody had that kind of money to buy ’em.

So I didn’t see them operating, driving that snowmachine around, until about five years later in ’64. I seen that they had tracks, and I thought they were -- they move around slow like them bulldozer. I didn’t know they could go fast.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, that first one maybe couldn’t go fast?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, storekeeper use it to go fishing in the springtime. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: There are three people I know in my life who like fishing. Man, they’re just crazy for fishing with a fishing pole. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: But they never said one word about fishing. Yeah. They never said they like fishing. KAREN BREWSTER: But they were crazy about it? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s my brother -- older bro -- second oldest brother. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then there’s another Native lady from another village came to Eagle and live here since 1942. And the storekeeper, Biederman, he’s Native, too.

They never say one word about fishing, but in the springtime or falltime, you’d see them fishing.

KAREN BREWSTER: Out on the Yukon? Or in the creeks?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, in the -- you could fish along the river in the falltime, and then in the springtime, uh, like -- like a creek, like Mission Creek. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: They make water hole, and they fish down through the ice.

And then, there’s a river, downriver about twenty miles down, 25 miles, that they call Seventymile. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: People go down there with their dogteam and put up a tent, and they go fishing.

KAREN BREWSTER: Through a hole in the ice?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And then, before my time, people with dogs could go up to Fortymile springtime and go fishing. I think that’s forty miles. K

AREN BREWSTER: Wow. What kind of fish were they catching in the -- MICAH MALCOLM: Grayling. KAREN BREWSTER: It’s all grayling?

MICAH MALCOLM: Those t -- they -- Around here, they’re pretty big. KAREN BREWSTER: Are they?

MICAH MALCOLM: I just never had patience for fishing. Never did.

KAREN BREWSTER: What about fishing with a net and -- or a wheel? MICAH MALCOLM: I helped people who went fish net, but --

I could, you know, I make a lot of things out of wood. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And like, uh, like dog sled. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Dog racing sled.

Long ago, they call it freight sled. I could copy it and make it my way, but it would still look like the sled. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, the same thing with the fish wheel. People make fish wheel. I never watch it, but I bend my spruce pole. Bent it, let it dry for maybe about a week or so, and then put it together without them older people telling me how to do that. I do it by just looking at their fish wheel. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow.

MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s the way I did it. And same thing with building log cabin. I just look at the old log cabin and just build it like that. I don’t know how they did it. I just did it my way.

KAREN BREWSTER: You just figure it out, huh? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: But did you ever put a fish net in yourself, or run your own fish wheel? Or you help other people?

MICAH MALCOLM: I never -- never -- never used fish net. I only used fish wheel.

Uh, first time I used a fish wheel was in the summer of 1958. I was fifteen years old, and that old guy from the village, he always got fish wheel in the summertime for his dogs and himself.

That summer, he didn’t put his fish wheel in, so I asked him if I -- the fish wheel was not together. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: But he had the raft and the axle and that bended thing, they call it a bucket. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And they were all apart, and I asked him if I could run that fish wheel. He said, "Yeah, go ahead."

So I put those fish wheel together just like they were put together before. But I did it my way, and that -- and I dig -- and then I dug down into the ground about four feet for what they call that dead man. KAREN BREWSTER: The anchoring?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. So I did that. About that long, that deep, maybe that wide. Put that cable around four feet wood about --

Put that four feet down in there. Cover it with gravel. That was to hold the fish wheel.

KAREN BREWSTER: That secures it to the beach? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Or the bluff or whatever? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Just right in front of the village. And later on, when I went fishing alone, I still run a fish wheel in the village.

Uh, you have to have an outboard motor to -- if you got it couple miles away from the village. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MARCY OKADA: Did you ever have a dogteam? MICAH MALCOLM: Me? MARCY OKADA: Yeah. Dog team?

MICAH MALCOLM: Not really, but I did have about, maybe about three dogs in the fall of ’59.

Before that, in the early '50’s my two older brother had their own dogteam. And I used to -- I used to drive them around.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you learned how to drive dogs? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: From your brothers?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And there was a lady next door neighbor, she -- she can’t walk without a cane. One side of her leg is shorter than the other, probably about that much. KAREN BREWSTER: Three inches.

MICAH MALCOLM: So even inside houses, she had to have a cane. And she had two dogs, big dogs.

And even though I was seven years old, she had me -- somebody cut wood back there, leff it way back in the woods, and she buys it from them, so that’s why she want me to go over there with her two dogs and bring it to her house.

And I’m seven years old. I’m driving three dogs around.

KAREN BREWSTER: It’s probably fun. MICAH MALCOLM: Heh? KAREN BREWSTER: Was it fun?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. I’d be dressed warm for winter. My mom always made moccasin, moose hide, moose hide mitts. She make a parka out of either corduroy or denim. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And put fox ruff, fox fur ruff around moose hide mitts.

KAREN BREWSTER: What was the jacket part of the parka? What kept you warm on your body?

MICAH MALCOLM: She -- she -- she’d make a lining out of wool. At that time, blankets were wool. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And -- KAREN BREWSTER: I know what you mean.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And then, at that time, everything wore out fast. You get a hole in your sleeve real fast. KAREN BREWSTER: The elbows, yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, just -- and then you get hole behind your pants from sitting down like this. And then hole in your knee. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And --

KAREN BREWSTER: So would she patch -- put patches on them? Or sew new ones? MICAH MALCOLM: Well, uh, I didn’t wear pants. I didn’t wear pants even though I was seven years old.

KAREN BREWSTER: You didn’t wear pants? MICAH MALCOLM: No. I didn’t wear that patch.

KAREN BREWSTER: What were you wearing? MICAH MALCOLM: I mean, I don’t wear the whole jean. I didn’t like patch on my jean. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, I see. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MARCY OKADA: Did you have --

MICAH MALCOLM: And then these kind of cap? KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: I started wearing them, I think, in 1953 when I was ten years old.

KAREN BREWSTER: Those river caps with the -- like a baseball cap. MICAH MALCOLM: No, this kind of cap came -- you know what Big Ray’s is? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: We got them the summer of 19 -- KAREN BREWSTER: Those were the Yukon River caps.

MICAH MALCOLM: They first got them in 1947. And then in 1949, falltime, one of my older brothers came back from Fairbanks wearing one like that. And after that, everybody started buying them.

And then when my older brothers buy new ones, and they wash their old one, and they give it to me. That’s how I started wearing them.

KAREN BREWSTER: Which brother was that, who came back with the hat? MICAH MALCOLM: Pete. KAREN BREWSTER: Pete Malcolm?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. He was the first oldest brother. That’s the one that got drafted in October ’41. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: He -- I don’t know what kind of training they do for radio operators, but when he got back from the army or -- he talked like he had a college education. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, he --

MICAH MALCOLM: Instead of saying "save," you know, S-A-V-E, he say "conserve." I just wondered if they teach him --

KAREN BREWSTER: They must’ve taught him the different language for the radio. MICAH MALCOLM: I mean, for a radio operator. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And he seemed to know a lot about the -- when the US invaded and bombed Japan. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: He knew all about that when he was in the army, too. It was supposed to be secret.

KAREN BREWSTER: So that trapline you said you ran, that was -- you said, what, west of Eagle? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, but uh -- KAREN BREWSTER: So that was --

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, I think -- (looking at map) you see the Excelsior? Right -- KAREN BREWSTER: Excelsior Creek?

MICAH MALCOLM: There’s a trail from Eagle all the way out to here. KAREN BREWSTER: Granite Creek?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, someplace out in there. There’s a marten. There’s a marten there, and one of those rivers went up to Glacier Peak. KAREN BREWSTER: To -- uh --

MICAH MALCOLM: So it was up around here, and we -- my brother, after we set the trap, there was a little cabin there we used to meet. He walk out there every weekend and bring whatever he catch back to the village and skin them.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you said Excelsior Creek? And then this is Glac -- MICAH MALCOLM: No, no. KAREN BREWSTER: No?

MICAH MALCOLM: It’s from Eagle all the way out to there, there’s a CAT trail. It’s straight. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: You know, a bulldozer trail. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: And then, out here it -- KAREN BREWSTER: ’Cause you said --

MICAH MALCOLM: Someplace out in here, there's trail goes this way into Seventymile. KAREN BREWSTER: There’s Seventymile, yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. So that place is, I think --

KAREN BREWSTER: ’Cause this says North Peak. MICAH MALCOLM: I -- KAREN BREWSTER: And Glacier Mountain.

MICAH MALCOLM: This map don’t show everything. MARCY OKADA: No. KAREN BREWSTER: No, it doesn’t. You’re right. But somewhere in there. Ok. Was that good trapping, then? MICAH MALCOLM: Heh?

KAREN BREWSTER: Was a good place to trap?

MALCOLM: Yeah, the guy who had that trapline before in the '40’s and early '50, he was a non-Native. He lived downtown Eagle. And, you know, you ever hear Glacier Peak? MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MARCY OKADA: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, he had a trapline from Eagle all the way out to Glacier Peak. And he had a cabin every, I think every ten miles.

Eight by eight cabin. It was cut wood and everything. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Some -- he put four logs into the ground about that far apart and up on top about eight, maybe eight feet, he put a floor. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then he put a ladder. And that’s where -- that’s where, if he get a moose or something, he’d put it up there, cover it with brush and all that canvas, tie it down so that no black bear would get it there. MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: So he had that every ten miles.

KAREN BREWSTER: What was his name? MICAH MALCOLM: Eric. Eric Seabrook. (sp?)

KAREN BREWSTER: And then when you were running your trapline out here, what were you catching on your trapline? MICAH MALCOLM: Just marten. KAREN BREWSTER: Marten. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: And was it a good price you were selling them? MICAH MALCOLM: Ah, gee, it’s ’59. Uh, I don’t remember how much we would get.

KAREN BREWSTER: But you sold them. Or did you keep ’em for yourself? MICAH MALCOLM: The store. KAREN BREWSTER: You sold them at the store? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Downtown. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: They bought it. And then my brother, at Seventymile, from Eagle out to Seventymile, they -- after they quit trapping in January 30, they go beaver trapping out there. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: But they didn’t live out there. They checked their trap about once a week. They would go out there with a dogteam. They make it one-day trip.

KAREN BREWSTER: And that was a pretty good place to get beaver? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, Seventymile.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So how come you stopped trapping?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, later on -- Well, uh, first of January, sometime around -- sometime around last part of December, the school teacher, had a lady school teacher, her husband came around down to our house.

He told me, uh, "On the next plane, you’re going to Fairbanks with me, and then from Fairbanks, you’re going to go down to Sitka to Sheldon Jackson High School." KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: I don’t know, I think his wife did all that. They never did ask me. I still don’t know who did it. So -- so that’s how -- so I left Eagle by first plane in January 1960.

And then, in Fairbanks, I got -- I got some clothes. You know, right across the bay from Sitka is the Native boarding high school, Mount Edgecumbe. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, at that time, lookin' at the yearbook, the guys wore blue jeans. And I thought, right across the bay in Sitka, I thought same thing. I thought Sheldon Jackson High School wore blue jeans, too.

But when I got down there, you can’t wear blue jeans to class. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And the school was owned by the Presbyterian Church, so you had to wear some kind of dress pants. And at that time, high school dress pants was that black cloth, something like this. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: They’re tan or black, and later on, a whole bunch of different colors. That’s what I had to buy when I got down there. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And they wore shirts like this. KAREN BREWSTER: With collars and buttons? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. You weren’t used to dressing like that? MICAH MALCOLM: Pardon? KAREN BREWSTER: What did -- you didn’t wear those kind of clothes here in the village? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, well -- (scraping noise near the microphone cuts across the voices)

MICAH MALCOLM: My mom always bought clothes from a Sears Roebuck catalog. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: Or Montgomery Ward catalog. From the early '50’s, always wore blue jeans and mostly flannel. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: She could buy them kids clothes on the store, flannel shirt, blue jeans, and she made mukluk and moose hide mitts and a hat. That’s what we wore in wintertime.

And then in the summertime, she bought us that, uh -- what do you call them now? The ones they use in high school gymnasium?

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, um, like tennis shoes. Sneakers. Those high tops?

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, back then, they were -- they were just a little above your ankle. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: But now, it’s just about that high.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, like tennis -- gym shoes. Tennis shoes. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Basketball shoes.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, the ones we had when we were kids, you lace up all the way to above your ankle. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s what we used to wear in the summertime.

KAREN BREWSTER: Converse. Black Converse high tops, maybe? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh. KAREN BREWSTER: Were they black? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: White string. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: White sole around them.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yep. Those were good shoes. MICAH MALCOLM: I liked them. KAREN BREWSTER: Those were good. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

And blue jeans, even though I was six, seven years old, I didn’t -- I had to have my own exact size. You know, when you’re a little kid, I guess -- I guess parents buy little -- clothes a little bigger just in case -- you know, I mean, for growing up. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: I liked my clothes to fit me just right.

KAREN BREWSTER: You didn’t wear your older brother’s -- what your older brothers outgrew, did you get it? MICAH MALCOLM: Eh. KAREN BREWSTER: If your older brothers had a pair of pants. MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: And they got too small, did you get them? MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: They were -- uh, they were kinda tall. You know, as tall as me, a little bit taller. And so, about that -- I didn’t start wearing pants waist 29 until April ’59.

KAREN BREWSTER: You were thin. Were you skinny?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, all my life I never had no weight problem. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Just, uh, a couple of -- one of my brothers had a weight problem, but he wasn’t very fat or anything, but he pretty heavy. My sister who’s still living in Fairbanks, she didn’t have any weight problem.

KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. Did you ever go downriver to Coal Creek and Woodchopper? You said other families were down there.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, in 1949, June, I think, that boat, uh, it came from Whitehorse, I think. And at that time, up in Old Crow. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Old Crow, there’s a store up there. That boat company from Dawson or Whitehorse, they go along the Yukon with a boat, delivering supplies to the store. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then they could take passengers, like from Eagle to Fort Yukon. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Well, that -- that’s how we got to Fort Yukon from Eagle, in one of them boats. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: My mom took me and my younger brother there, because, at that time, there was a hospital and a doctor there. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: So we had a checkup and all that. That we couldn’t go to Fairbanks on an airplane. Didn’t have the money for that.

But later on in ’51, my mom did take us to Circle on that same boat. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: From Circle went over the highway to Fairbanks to see -- have a checkup with the doctor.

KAREN BREWSTER: Was that your first time to Fairbanks? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And you know Wendell Street bridge? KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: You know what it looks like now? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Back in the summer of 1959, that was a rope bridge about that wide. Rope. KAREN BREWSTER: Rope bridge. But just for pedestrians? Just for walking? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. No cars? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. No. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And that Cushman Street bridge at that time had that frame over it. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then all day long that two block Second Avenue, full of people. And back in when I grew up, the '60’s and '70’s, '80, if you want -- if you were living in Fairbanks and you want to find a friend of yours, or if you're from out in the village and you hear somebody from your village come to town, if you want to see them, all you have to do is walk on Second Avenue, and you -- KAREN BREWSTER: You run into them, huh?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And I had three -- three good friends who owned bars on Second Avenue. Bars. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And one morning I was -- had a little hangover, and I stop at my friend’s bar. The bar opened at ten o’clock. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then there were some other people there's -- All together, there must’ve been about ten people waiting for the bar to open. And finally at ten o’clock, the guy opened the door. We went in there. And everybody had a beer. I had one.

And then the owner was a bartender. He told me, "There’s too many people in here right now for -- I -- can you take something down to the bank for me?" I said, "Yeah." And he said, "After you get -- take it to the -- give it to the bank, come back."

So he gave me that bag. That bag of money, there's two bars together. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MICAH MALCOLM: One of the doors on Second Avenue. One is on First. You could walk through the --

And those two bars, the night before, they put their money in a bag, and that’s what that -- the guy who owned the bar, that’s what he wanted me to take to the bank.

I took, I don’t know how much money in there. I took it to the bank and came back to the bar, and he bought me a couple of beer.

And same thing happened, the guy owned a pawn shop on Second Avenue. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: And I stopped in there just to look around. He did the same thing. He told me, "Take it down to the bank for me." He gave me a couple dollars. And so I did.

And those years, you know, steal anything, if you did, a lot of people would know on Second Avenue, and you probably wouldn’t have friends left if you did something like that.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Yeah. So did you say something earlier about moose hunting somewhere out off the river?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, we went -- we went -- sometime we go down to Nation. KAREN BREWSTER: Nation, yeah? MICAH MALCOLM: That’s about as far as we go. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And most time, it’s between Nation and Sheep Creek. We -- we put up camp on a place called Wood Island. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And some people could read the river. I was one of them. KAREN BREWSTER: You can read the river? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s why the chief always let me drive the riverboat. You know, you don’t want to hit the bottom and probably break a prop or something like that. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MICAH MALCOLM: If a river got a current. You know, fast running water. That’s deep water. And if you see a dead water, uh, on that side or that side, dead water, you stay away from that because that’s about that deep.

KAREN BREWSTER: That's the shallow part? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: But when you’re going to put in a fish wheel --

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, you can tell because, uh, the water would be kinda going like -- if -- KAREN BREWSTER: In circles? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And if it’s kind of -- kind of almost dead water, it’s -- it got to be running water.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you want to put a fish wheel where the water’s moving, but in circles? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, you always want to put it, like, like here --

KAREN BREWSTER: Like you want to put it up against a bluff? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, no, along the beach if there’s an eddy here. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Eddy? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then -- and then, right here, running water, you put that fish wheel right about where the eddy and the running water is. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: Or a little more towards the running water to turn the fish wheel. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: And then that -- make sure it’s kinda deep so your fish wheel run.

KAREN BREWSTER: But you do it by an eddy because that’s where the fish -- MICAH MALCOLM: That’s where they -- KAREN BREWSTER: They go rest? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah. MARCY OKADA: Hm. KAREN BREWSTER: And they build up, right? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you’ve built fish wheel? MICAH MALCOLM: What? KAREN BREWSTER: Have you built a fish wheel? Or helped build one?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, I got -- I got a picture of me building a fish wheel right outside my house in the old village. I was just looking at it this morning. There was a couple non-Native guys talking to me. I got it at home.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So what kind of wood do you build your wheel out of? MICAH MALCOLM: People use two different wood. Um, the small spruce tree. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: Or birch. I use -- I use, uh, the small -- KAREN BREWSTER: Small spruce trees. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: For -- for which parts? The baskets? MICAH MALCOLM: To bend it, yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, you bend the spruce? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. MICAH MALCOLM: And they last longer than birch. Birch could rot very fast.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. How do you bend the spruce? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, wherever you -- like -- like if I were making a fish wheel and all the -- I get all the poles from over there. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, after I cut it, I would uh --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, it’s hard to explain when you don’t have a tree right here. MICAH MALCOLM: Here'd be a tree. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Maybe about that far away from this. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then there would be another one back here. It would be kinda about that high. Uh, you put that pole here. You stand over here. You would push it this way until it kind of bend.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, I see. You bend it around another tree? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: And then when you get it -- when you get up to here, you lift it up and put it down in there. That -- that would hold.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. And then you leave it there? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, until it dry, maybe a week or so.

KAREN BREWSTER: And you have to do it when that spruce is green? So it bends? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: Uh --

KAREN BREWSTER: So you don’t steam it or anything? MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. MARCY OKADA: Hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you bend it around a bigger tree and then like anchor it down? MICAH MALCOLM: Something about that -- KAREN BREWSTER: About a foot around? MICAH MALCOLM: Two of them. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: This one here, this one here. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: This one here. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Wow.

MICAH MALCOLM: I mean, they don’t have to be big. It’s probably about something like this. KAREN BREWSTER: But it has to be big enough for the bend? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. I mean, you bend it. You standing here holding this. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. MICAH MALCOLM: You put this one over here against this side. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: And then over here, you keep it up there when you keep this one up here like this. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. You keep bending it. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Even.

MICAH MALCOLM: When you get that far, you put it down so it -- that side will just -- KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

And the -- The piece you’re bending, is it still attached to the ground, or you’ve cut it and it’s just a long branch? MICAH MALCOLM: Oh, you mean the bend? No. KAREN BREWSTER: This piece that you were using to bend. MICAH MALCOLM: No, you cut it down. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. MICAH MALCOLM: About that.

KAREN BREWSTER: About three to four inches around? MICAH MALCOLM: No, probably about that on the big end. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. Five inches. MICAH MALCOLM: And then maybe it be about, maybe from here to that -- KAREN BREWSTER: Is that ten feet? MICAH MALCOLM: That grey -- that grey round thing. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: About that long. KAREN BREWSTER: Eight feet?

MICAH MALCOLM: And then you put that small end around that. KAREN BREWSTER: Right, ok. So you’ve already cut that piece down? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Ok, so that’s for the baskets. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: What about the, um, frame, the main part and the raft?

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, you cut them full through. You peel them. The bark come right off and you let it dry. KAREN BREWSTER: And that’s spruce also? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: Spruce tree.

KAREN BREWSTER: Do you ever use driftwood? MICAH MALCOLM: No. Well, I guess you could if you make wooden raft. People used big driftwood. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: That big around. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: But when they used driftwood before drum, I think they used four of them in the big end, about that round.

KAREN BREWSTER: So now you use dru -- you put the spruce -- MICAH MALCOLM: You make a frame, and then -- KAREN BREWSTER: And put it on drums? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: You make the frame, and -- you know that horse like I told you? KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: Well, they build the frame on that horse, and at the bottom would be the top of the raft, you know. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And on that two logs, they put the drum on the two. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Across? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And then they -- they nail that metal strip on that side and they put it on there. Wrap that thing around that log. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: And nail that. They do that about three or four places to hold the drum to the -- KAREN BREWSTER: To the logs? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, ok. Um, and those are -- the log -- what about the logs that go from the fish wheel to shore? MICAH MALCOLM: Oh, that's -- KAREN BREWSTER: What are those called? I can’t remember. MICAH MALCOLM: That’s probably, oh. KAREN BREWSTER: Eight --

MICAH MALCOLM: That’s probably logs about -- big end about that round, small end about that one, probably from here to the garbage box. KAREN BREWSTER: That’s like thirty feet? Twenty-five, thirty feet? MICAH MALCOLM: It’s a little bit far. Maybe from here to the --

KAREN BREWSTER: But that’s a tall tree. MICAH MALCOLM: Heh? KAREN BREWSTER: That’s a tall tree that you -- MICAH MALCOLM: No, the big end would be about that round. KAREN BREWSTER: Six inches? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And the small end would be about that long. KAREN BREWSTER: Three inches, yeah. And is that spruce also? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. What are those called that they attach? Spar? MICAH MALCOLM: I think they call the spar. KAREN BREWSTER: Spar, yeah. I think -- or the anchor.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then after you put the fish wheel in, you gotta, you have to build something they call fence. You know what that is? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, go ahead and explain it. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: How do you build the fence? MICAH MALCOLM: Ah, there’s two different way of building it. You build the frame first, and then at maybe one or two corners, like this. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: This would be the top. This would be the bottom. And over here, you would put it -- the brace maybe about that long, brace, so that that thing -- they call it fence. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: It don’t twist around. That fence is from the beach right up to the raft. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then it’s under the raft about that far. KAREN BREWSTER: Three feet? MICAH MALCOLM: And underwater. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: Until one end of the -- one end of the fence is about that far from the turning fish wheel. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok. So it’s --

MICAH MALCOLM: Because that fence is, when the salmon swimming, they hit that fence, and then they go out, and then they go out to the end of that fence, and they keep going out. That’s when the fish wheel turn and scoop it up. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then you have to have another one going straight down from the outside box to about two feet behind the outside of the raft to keep the fish from going straight out. If it hit that fence, they go -- come this way, and that -- turn it -- what that -- KAREN BREWSTER: It keeps them -- it keeps them -- MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: -- corralled? It’s like corralling fish? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, it's inside close to that fish wheel turning.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. And those fences, is that made out of pieces of spruce?

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, the frame is a small spruce, but they use chicken wire. KAREN BREWSTER: Nowadays, they use -- MICAH MALCOLM: Same thing they use for the fish wheel, but --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. But before there was chicken wire, what did people use? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, I guess that’s the only thing. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And you had to have them heavy chicken wire, too. They make some that’s not very strong. You can’t use that for fish wheel. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: You can’t use them for anything with fish wheel for that -- they call that "lead." KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: You got to have that strong chicken wire, too.

KAREN BREWSTER: Those fish are strong, huh? MICAH MALCOLM: Oh no, the current. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, the current? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. I would think those big king salmon would hit that chicken wire and go right through it. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. When they hit that chicken wire going from the beach to the fish wheel, they go straight out, and that’s where that other one in front. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Turn them back. And that’s where that thing turning.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oop, they catch ’em. That’s smart. So --

MICAH MALCOLM: And sometimes, too, most of the time, after a while, when you build a new fish wheel, that axle will make a squeaking loud noise. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Nobody showed me how to fix that, but I did it my way. I bought a couple rolls of telegraph -- no, no, uh, not wire. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Baling wire. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, baling, yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: It’s pretty thin. I bought a couple of those, and I put it around that axle, and then nailed it so it don’t come loose, and then while the fish wheel turned, I put it -- I put it -- covered the whole thing, turning, and when it got to the end, they stopped the fish wheel. And I nail it down.

And cut off what’s left over. And I go out to the other side and do the same thing, and that stopped the noise.

KAREN BREWSTER: So that meant -- the axle is turning wood on wood, and now you made it turning the wood on the wire? So it’s a cushion? MICAH MALCOLM: That stopped the sound. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: The squeaking sound.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So what’s the axle made out of? MICAH MALCOLM: Big log one end, about that big. The big end could be about that big. KAREN BREWSTER: That’s like a foot. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: And the place where it fit down into that thing that weighted up and down. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: It’s probably about that long. Maybe that long.

KAREN BREWSTER: Five, six inches? That’s a lot of work to build a fish wheel. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And sometimes, I make it myself.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. And you have to go out and find all the right trees? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. We -- like I said, we live -- the tree, they’ll probably be about that far from the village. KAREN BREWSTER: Just across the road? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you didn’t have to go very far? MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: You didn’t go down river and look for trees or anything? MICAH MALCOLM: No.

KAREN BREWSTER: No. Well, it’s interesting, you know, how people use the river. From here, you needed a boat? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: To go up and down the river. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: And if you -- did you have a boat? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Last time I had a boat, I had a thirty horsepower with a twenty feet boat. And I didn’t need it anymore, so I sold it to a guy named Jeff Austin. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: You ever hear of him? KAREN BREWSTER: No.

MICAH MALCOLM: He lived about halfway down. He live in Fairbanks, but he got property here. I sold it to him for, I think, $3500, I think.

And him and that storekeeper downtown, I don’t know what kind of deal they’ve got, but later on when I was downtown, that storekeeper gave me the money for that boat, $3500 cash. KAREN BREWSTER: Wow. But um --

MICAH MALCOLM: It was a -- I bought the boat new, too. It was a thirty horsepower.

KAREN BREWSTER: Did people -- when you were growing up, did people travel out on the Yukon in the winter with dog teams? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Use this -- go out here?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Some, well, like my brother-in-law, he go down to Nation. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: The storekeeper take him down with his riverboat about last part of September when there’s no ice in the river. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: He take him down the Nation, and with all the food and everything you need until trapping season close at the end of January.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. Then how’d he get back? MICAH MALCOLM: Heh? KAREN BREWSTER: How did he come home? MICAH MALCOLM: Eh, he got his dog team.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, he’s with the dog team? MICAH MALCOLM: So he -- so like I said, people had four or five dogs. My brother-in-law had four dogs, and he’d come back to Eagle.

Even though trapping season closed on February 28, people stopped trapping, uh, January 30. I ask my older brother about that. I asked him, "How come the trapping season closed on February 28, why do you and the other people stop trapping in January?"

He said, "In February, the marten, they get some spruce pitch on their fur." KAREN BREWSTER: Mmm. MICAH MALCOLM: And then they fight, and that damages the fur a little bit. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm. MICAH MALCOLM: So that’s why they quit trapping in end of January.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, interesting. So he was out here at the Nation. He was -- he was trapping just marten? Or would he trap other things out there?

MICAH MALCOLM: No, they -- like on Sheep Creek, Tatonduk, like I say. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: Sheep Creek, the two brothers, the family, they trap down there for many years.

And then, there’s some people like some other people, Native people, they live there, cut wood for steamboat. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, but, like those two brothers, they trap there all the time until I don’t know when, probably 1945, sometime.

KAREN BREWSTER: So the people who came to cut wood pushed them out of their trapline? MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: No. MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: They just stopped?

MICAH MALCOLM: The people, they went -- the people who trapped, they went pretty far into the creek. The people who cut wood for steamboat, they cut wood right on the riverbank. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Right.

MARCY OKADA: So, they were there together? KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MARCY OKADA: Same time?

KAREN BREWSTER: They were there at the same time? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: We all leave from October when the steamboat quit running until they cut the wood.

One of the older guys told me, when he cut wood at Sheep Creek for the steamboat, it was four dollars a cord. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, my gosh. MICAH MALCOLM: I guess that was good money.

KAREN BREWSTER: I guess, but that’s a lot of wood for four dollars. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, but that was in the '30s.

KAREN BREWSTER: So they would cut wood in the winter and pile it up and leave it there? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And then -- and then they let it dry all summer and reuse it next time.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. Yeah. Now did people do any sheep hunting? MICAH MALCOLM: My dad did, but that’s way up in Northwest Canada. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: Now one time, him and his brother, they shot nine sheep. I don’t think anybody ever got that much at one time. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Nine sheep. And they were both -- they were both expert shots with a .30-.30 rifle. KAREN BREWSTER: They must’ve been.

But yeah, that was up over in the Ogilvie's maybe, in Canada (Ogilvie Mountains in the Yukon Territory of northwestern Canada)? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh. KAREN BREWSTER: The map ends, unfortunately.

MICAH MALCOLM: Where’s Fort Yukon? KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, up here. MICAH MALCOLM: Oh. Maybe. MARCY OKADA: Oh. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: Fort McPherson would be right around in here. KAREN BREWSTER: So up there, yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Then from there, there’s a lot of -- a lot of crick (meaning creek). People called them river. And one of them crick ended about maybe sixty miles northwest of Eagle. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And from there, they have a trail into -- going into Eagle Creek or Sheep Creek. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. Interesting.

MICAH MALCOLM: You ever hear of the Mad Trapper? MARCY OKADA: Hm-mm. MICAH MALCOLM: Heh? KAREN BREWSTER: No.

MICAH MALCOLM: He was some guy that live up in Old Crow someplace, uh, Fort McPherson. He -- he come into the country from nobody-knows-where, and I got about three or four books of him. And every time he -- they call him Mad Trapper, but I don’t think he ever trapped.

But when he come into a town, he buys his things with cash money. And one of the stories about him was that they think he was something like a gangster from Chicago, had to get out of the state down there and move to Alaska. And they think that’s what he was.

And he was in Eagle at one time in the '30’s. My uncle -- my Uncle Joe. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Met him someplace on the river between Eagle and Nation. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And it was probably about lunch time, because they built fire and had something to eat and had a pot of tea. He -- KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. But he never caused any trouble?

MICAH MALCOLM: No. One of the reasons he came to Eagle at that time was, uh, that when he was up in Fort McPherson around there, he heard about Charley River. And I don’t know how he heard about it.

And he wanted to go there, so he came down, I think -- in the Nation, I think. And from there, he caught a steamboat and came up to Eagle.

And there was a guy named Cap Dahlfus (sp?) was Native guy from Charley River. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: He live in Eagle that time. And somebody, when that guy come to Eagle, asking about Charley River, somebody told him about that Native guy in the village who came from there.

So he came up, walk up to the village, and my mom saw him walk by our village. And that guy asked my mom for the Cap Dahlfus (sp?) lived. My mom pointed out his cabin, and that’s where he went, that Mad Trapper.

I guess Cap Dahlfus (sp?) told him whatever he want, Charley River. But he never did go to Charley River. He went back up, I think this -- when he went back up, I think he went up Sheep Creek into Northwest Territories. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: I got books about him, couple of them.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, I’ve heard about -- I’ve heard the name. I know there’s a book about the Mad Trapper. I just don’t -- didn’t know the story. (scraping noise)

Anything else you want to talk about? Your subsistence activities through your lifetime?

MICAH MALCOLM: Eh, like I told you, we hunted moose behind -- behind the old village. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And that’s because we didn’t have any boats or -- and -- and then later on, like I said, we hunt moose all the way down to the Nation. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And we hunt along the river so that we -- we don’t want to go off the river. It’d be too much work to pack.

KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. So were you successful when you hunted? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. Me and the chief, like I told you. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah. Wood Island. MICAH MALCOLM: Fred Stevens. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: We get moose when we go down. We always had a camp at Wood Island. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MICAH MALCOLM: He -- like I said, he did -- older than me, but he didn’t know (scraping noise cuts across the voices) how to tell where the river's deep and all that, so I drove the boat all the time.

KAREN BREWSTER: What about the fishing -- or the fish? You know, now, right now the fish aren’t -- you can’t go fishing. MICAH MALCOLM: I think --

KAREN BREWSTER: So how has that changed? Did the -- did you used to get more fish?

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. (scraping noise) There -- My uncle when he got a fish camp, he used to fish for king salmon with fish wheel until about -- at least the middle part of August.

And then after that, he -- he had a fish camp down below Eagle Bluff. And he -- he baled, all the dry fish he got with the telegraph wire, and make it fifty pound. KAREN BREWSTER: Fifty pounds? Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And then, after he do that, before he -- he -- baling wire, he take what he need for the coming winter for five dogs, and what’s left over after he take fish for his dogs, the store -- the store buys it, all the fish from him.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. And then who would buy it at the store?

MICAH MALCOLM: The people who owned dogteams. There was no commercial dog food. So that’s what people used for their dogteams.

You could go take maybe fifty pounds dried salmon out to your trapline, if you got a dogteam, so that you don’t have to cook for them. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then my brothers told me that when they go take fifty pound dry dog salmon, they just don’t give it to the dog. They put it in the camp stove and scorch it a little bit. You know -- KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: -- get a little grease come out of it. And after they scorch it or heat it up, that’s when they give it to the dogs.

KAREN BREWSTER: It’s easier for the dog to eat it soft, maybe? MICAH MALCOLM: No, it’s better than -- I guess, eating it frozen or --

KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. But what -- So everybody who had a dog team -- MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: -- they didn’t do their own fishing?

MICAH MALCOLM: No, they buy dog food from the store. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. I thought you’d have to go get all your own fish. MARCY OKADA: Hm-mm. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, they have to buy ’em from the store. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And some of them are good, too. You could -- you could tell which one is good, and you’d keep that for yourself, if you buy fifty pound.

KAREN BREWSTER: What makes a good one? MICAH MALCOLM: You could tell. Female fish is not very good. The male fish is -- I mean, female fish spoil faster than a male fish.

KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. Even without -- a female fish with eggs or without?

MICAH MALCOLM: Well, even when they’d cut it up and then they’d dry it. MARCY OKADA: Mm-hm.

KAREN BREWSTER: Huh, interesting. And then you’d use the eggs, too? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, they -- they’d put it in a five-gallon -- I mean, uh, at that time potatoes came in that, they call it gunnysack. KAREN BREWSTER: Yep. MICAH MALCOLM: You know what that is? MARCY OKADA: Yep.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, the people have that gunnysack right on the cutting table. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And hanging with the top open, they just drop that in there, and just let it hang in there.

If it get to smelling, it still good, you know, for dogs. When you cook for dogs in five-gallon bucket. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: You put some in there.

KAREN BREWSTER: So did they dry the fish eggs on the rack? MICAH MALCOLM: No. KAREN BREWSTER: No? MICAH MALCOLM: Well -- KAREN BREWSTER: Just put them in the sack? MICAH MALCOLM: Well, some people do. His wife, my uncle’s wife, do that. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: She just put it anywhere under the fish rack. Then when they come back, move back to the village, they just put it in the gunnysack. That’s for the dogs.

My mom cooked them, boil them, too, when it’s fresh. I like the taste of it. KAREN BREWSTER: The eggs? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. (scraping sound again)

KAREN BREWSTER: Marcy, any more questions?

MARCY OKADA: When you came back from school, you said you went to Mount Edgecumbe? KAREN BREWSTER: No, you went to Sheldon Jackson? MICAH MALCOLM: I did. January 1960 to May 1960. And then after the school was out, I had to work for that school for one month. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: Because you had to pay something like two -- two hundred and some dollars for the winter.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, you had to work off your tuition? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, I had to do that.

And then I came back to -- I had -- at that time when I was in class, they had a wood shop class, and the school was both a university and high school. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Presbyterian Church. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And they own a gift shop. And museum at school. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: And the museum, the store, they sell arts and crafts. And when we go to the wood shop and high school class. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: We make a wooden paddle there, anywhere from this long. This long.

KAREN BREWSTER: A foot long? MICAH MALCOLM: Maybe twelve inches long. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm. MICAH MALCOLM: Little longer. And then that long. This longer one. KAREN BREWSTER: It’s like 36 inches long, maybe?

MICAH MALCOLM: I forgot how many you had to make to get twenty dollars. And after Friday, everything you made, the school bought it from you. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

MICAH MALCOLM: That’s how I made something like twenty dollars a week in 1960. And I’m glad I saved some.

And then when I was in class, my roommate was on the basketball team. The A -- the B Squad. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm. MICAH MALCOLM: And they -- both the A and B Squad basketball go on a trip to other high school. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And he was working at the café there in Sitka, and clean up after school all the time. And when he go on the trip, I do the cleanup.

And so, most times, I end up with twenty bucks a week, and I’d save it. And I’m glad I did because later on in June 22 when I got done working, I had to pay my way back to Fairbanks. I think it was $83.

KAREN BREWSTER: So what year did you finish school? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, and then -- KAREN BREWSTER: ’64? What year?

MICAH MALCOLM: No, in which school? KAREN BREWSTER: Sheldon Jackson. MICAH MALCOLM: Oh. May ’60. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, 1960? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And I didn’t go -- I didn’t go the full -- KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, ok. Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: -- went to school. So when school was out in May 1960, and then next year, I went to Mount Edgecumbe. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, I see. Ok. MICAH MALCOLM: I went there --

KAREN BREWSTER: You transferred? MICAH MALCOLM: After school was out, I went to visit the principal. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And I told him, "I'd like to see if I could get accepted for next year." And he said, "Ok, we’ll accept you."

So I went to Mount Edgecumbe the next year, and I stayed there only one year because even though I didn’t know it, I had some medical problem. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: So. And that, when I was there, it had 660 kids. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And then --

KAREN BREWSTER: So you -- you left school? MICAH MALCOLM: I finished -- KAREN BREWSTER: 1962? MICAH MALCOLM: The ninth grade in May ’61.

And so I never -- and then I came back to Eagle in the spring. And then, after that, I didn’t go to high school anymore. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then in 1962, August, I went down to Los Angeles, California. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: And the BIA was sending people down there to go to work. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: Or go to some kind of school. Lot of -- when I was down there, I was downtown in Main Street in Los Angeles one day, afternoon. Here I ran into a lot of the -- maybe about five, six kids from Mount Edgecumbe High School. They were standing right there in the sidewalk.

They were -- they just got done with the school. They -- theybwere going to electronics school. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And man, it was good to see them. Gee, with all the millions of people there, to run into --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. So what kind of training did you get in Los Angeles? MICAH MALCOLM: I didn’t go to any kind of training. I went down there to work. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

MICAH MALCOLM: They sent people down there to work or go to training. KAREN BREWSTER: Um-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And my brother, Tim, older brother went down. They sent him to Ohio. And he went to work in a factory that make cardboard box.

And for me, I went down there to work, and the BIA found me a job in a vending company. KAREN BREWSTER: A vending company? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Like vending machines?

MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, a company that had vending machines all over Los Angeles. Coke machine. KAREN BREWSTER: Right, yeah. MICAH MALCOLM: Candy machine. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then at another place, the company had another store that they -- they had hot food in vending machine. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: I made sixty dollars a week down there, gross. And I cleared after tax $48 a week.

And out of that forty-eight, I paid for my -- a trailer. The trailer was, uh, $30 a week. $7.50 a week. KAREN BREWSTER: Hm. MICAH MALCOLM: $30 a month. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MICAH MALCOLM: $7.50 a week take out of my pay. And my bus fare is about at least $3. My food is about at least $7. And I -- and then I had some money in there to --

I went down with about $350. So sometime I put money in the bank. It'd be about $7. And when I left there -- I had to leave there because I was getting some kind of bad stress problem. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah. MARCY OKADA: Mm.

MICAH MALCOLM: So I had to leave there sometime in December. KAREN BREWSTER: 1961 or '2? MICAH MALCOLM: ’62. KAREN BREWSTER: Ok.

MICAH MALCOLM: And when I left Los Angeles, I took a greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Seattle. I paid my fare, $24. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. MICAH MALCOLM: And it took 33 hours. KAREN BREWSTER: Whoo!

MICAH MALCOLM: And then it -- it only use one bus. They said it was going to change bus someplace, but they didn’t.

KAREN BREWSTER: And then you came home to Eagle? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, came back to Fairbanks. And then I stayed in Fairbanks that winter. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And then, after January, I work in -- uh, over in Hamilton Acres. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: I work in the fire department. And lived there for, I don’t know, probably about last part of April, I think.

And then -- and then I stayed in the room for rent some place. Some places I think it’s seven dollars a week, some places. And I worked for some people here and there.

And then my mom wrote to me about first of May. She said they’re going to build a new school in Eagle Village. So I didn’t have any money to come home, so I wrote a letter to the postmaster and his wife. They were good friends of mine. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: I told ’em about they’re gonna build a new school. I want to work on there. I’d like to ask them for airplane fare. They -- they paid my fare right there in Eagle, and they -- KAREN BREWSTER: Nice.

MICAH MALCOLM: They wrote back to me and then about, maybe about May 10, I came back to Eagle, and I went to work on Memorial Day.

KAREN BREWSTER: And you’ve been here ever since? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. MARCY OKADA: Yep. MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah, but -- but then after that, I live in Fairbanks every now and then. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

MICAH MALCOLM: When I -- when we went to work on that new school on Memorial Day, you can’t work on holidays because it’s BIA. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: So they set the dates, I think, 'til about May 27, something like that. And me and my brother went to work. We made $3.28 per hour, six days a week, we made $750 a month.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, that’s a lot of money.

MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. And I worked 'til about middle part of October. And my brother worked 'til about September 30. Then he had to go into the military, and then the job was over in December.

And my brother was -- went into the army last part of September. He got paid until December. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. MICAH MALCOLM: While he was in the army. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh. MICAH MALCOLM: From the school.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. Um, so we’ve had you talking for a long time, so I think we’re going to wrap it up. MICAH MALCOLM: Ok.

KAREN BREWSTER: Is there anything else you would like to share with us? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh -- KAREN BREWSTER: Any memories or stories? MICAH MALCOLM: Uh, not really.

KAREN BREWSTER: What is it that you like about living out here? MICAH MALCOLM: I don’t know. The -- sometime ago maybe, about ten years ago, there was a guy and his wife, little older people, from I think Los Angeles, I think. Or some city above Los Angeles. Uh, he -- they live right above -- up, farther up above my house. KAREN BREWSTER: Mm-hm.

MICAH MALCOLM: And he got to be a good friend of mine, him and his wife. And he -- he come around my house every now and then. He said he like Eagle.

And he said, "I like Eagle. I like living in Eagle." And then I asked him, "Oh, what do you like about Eagle? What makes you want to live here?"

He said, "It’s peaceful around here." I guess it’s not like that down in the States. KAREN BREWSTER: No.

MICAH MALCOLM: But -- and then -- and then his wife can’t take the winter weather up here, so they had -- they sold the house. They moved back down to the States.

And then he ended up in the hospital someplace down there, and one time his wife when driving the car to visit him, and she got in an accident and got killed on the highway. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh. MICAH MALCOLM: And then after that, he passed away.

KAREN BREWSTER: So do you feel like it’s peaceful here? MICAH MALCOLM: Yeah. You don’t have to worry about walking around in the dark. MARCY OKADA: Uh-huh.

KAREN BREWSTER: That’s true. Ok. Well, thank you very much for your time today. MICAH MALCOLM: Yep. KAREN BREWSTER: We really appreciate it. MICAH MALCOLM: Where -- where you going today?