Woman Driver
Is Typical Alaskan
a-—
HEADQUARTERS. ALASKAN
DEPARTMENT — This is the
story of a woman who actually
does a man's job in thus war the
story of a woman who drives a
truck at the .Alaska Defense Com
mand headquarters for the Army
Engineers. This could only be
Rusty Dow's story, though per
haps it’s more a philosophy than
a story.
Rusty Dow is one of that leg
endary company that can only be
found in Alaska. There are many
women helping the engineers in
Alctska and handling important
jobs . . . Lydia Sturm of Seattle,
Isabelle Hixson of Riverside, Cal
ifornia* June Pederson of Aber
deen, South Dakota. But only
handsome, plump, and smiling
Rusty with the kindly blue eyes
and the unruly red hair and the
khaki coveralls, drives an engi- j
neer mail truck through the ruts I
and roads and forts of Alaska.
Rusty’s definite about women
and war work. She’s appalled at
the newsreel pictures of women
trying to handle real war jobs in
shirts. She’s gone on record as
saying "legs are a woman’s best
sex asset, but you can’t keep
Hashing legs at men and expect
’em to mind their business, if
you’re working with men.” She
mothers thre civil service girls
who come up and every winter
has her ups and downs with them
on the business of dressing for
Alaskan cold. She herself hauls
out her mukiuks (fur boots) and
path a arid' has gotten most of the
girls doing likewise.
‘‘A lot of mud has gone under
the bridge” since Rusty hit Alas
ka in 1934, after her brother, L.
Z. Scott, had written down about
the Matanuska Valley. For years
of trucking in California, “you
had nothing to show for it. You
lived and paid bills and you and
thousands of others never really
l like it. You had butter and
cream hauls across the desert and
truck and trailer hauls between
the small towns. But up hero
you have peace and contentment.
This is the freest country there
is. It’s a kind of theater, too from
the clouds always acting up on
the mountains to the oldtimer
wandering about town.”
Rusty bought an old Chevrolet
truck, a two-ton job, to Alaska,
and her parents. She reached Pal
mer just before the rush to tfne
Matanuska farming land and she
free-lanced trucking jobs. She
hauled lumber, mosquito netting,
passengers bound for binges in
town and back. She ran a laun
dry and had a mail contrad.
When the Independence mine re
opened for a gold rush in the
Talkeetna mountains, she truck
ed supplies for the prospectors
When she couldn’t shovel the'
snow drifts she put on snow
shoes and packed medicine, mag
azines, and mail in a board on
her shoulders. She picked up so
many half-frozen miners along
her route that she began a jitney
seTvice in a 7-passenger car,
hauled her travellers 65 miles
from mine to town, invaded the
Anchorage saloons about 4 a. m.
to round the passengers up for
the return trip at 7 a. m.
Rusty was married in Alaska
in 1940 to Russ Dow. former
Dartmouth ski champ who tame
up on a glacier expedition and
stayed. Her wedding ring is
Alaska gold, her engagement
ring, on work-worn but curious
ly gentle hands is fossilized
ivory with a diamond. Dow is a
ski instructor at the Anchorage
base.
Rusty (christened Ola) was
born in the Texas Panhandle
where there was no town, went
to high school in Carlsbad. New
Mexico, and moved to California
where she was a jack-of-all
trades, including truck driving.
The only girl with four brothers,
she’s glad her dad raised her like
another boy, with chores and hard
work outdoors that made her
muscular and healthy. Her fa
ther, Jack .Scott now lives in
Salem. Oregon.
To own one of Rusty’s paints
is an honor. In oils and pastelr
she does Alaskan vistas and
early transportation scenes, not
that she ever studied, but like
everything else took it the hard
way . “by doing it.” She skis, in
a laymen’s way but allows she
is better at truck driving. She
says she keeps house after a
work days, six days a week,
fashion and after her ten-hour
Starting at 7:30 a. m.
She has had no day off in the
more than three years since she’s
been driving for the engineers.
She has no desire to ‘‘go outside”
when the war’s over—she and
her husband are ' going to the
mountains where he will have his
dream of a ski lodge and she will
photograph and paint the moun
tains.
Rusty counts her proudest day
when she got h^r job with Uncle
Sam’s army engineers “beeaus.
tbey get lots done, when the go
ing’s hardest pioneering. I like
action and we’ve had it from the
first engineer axe laid into the
forest that’s our base here. It’s
hard to remember sometimes
now. when we hunted low brush
moose (rabbits) and high bru^h
moose through here.” •
Rusty wears men’s clothes and
has for so long she would feel
uncomfortable in skirts and
dDfcsn’t mists “this stocking thing.”
She laughs at the things she’d
have to wear in the way of hats
and clothes if she wore women’s
garb.
The first winter she drove for
! the engineers, men and fellow
drivers were skeptical of a wom
an driver, but Rusty played in
luck, went through blizzards and
dogtrails and roads with no acci
dents, handled the extra trips,
and before long everyone was
saying “Hi, Rusty.” .All the mili
tary from Lt. Gen. Simon Buck
ner commanding general, Alas
kan Department, on down* pass
the time of day with Rusty and
Buckner has said: “Rusty Dow!
She’s a real sourdough. When
she tried driving a jeep she sa:d
it wasn’t any more exciting than
driving a motorized pup.”
Rusty thinks it’s romance and
adventure that brings people to
Alaska including the civilians
coming up to help the army en
1 gineers. “It’s a yen to. move about
to start with, and then like as
, not it’s wanting to get away from
I things that’ve gone wrong, like
l love affairs and business. Lots
.of folks have the impression
they’re going to find a bear hid
1 ing back of every spruce but
I’m glad to say that’s wrong, be
cause I’m tired of seeing our
game butchered. To fly over
Alaska is one .thing but to stay
and scrutinize it is another. If
people fit in Alaska, they stay
i arid if they can’t adapt them
selves to the. big country, they
go back where they came from.”
Rusty thm.ks more civilians
could ccme to Alaska and eujoy
it and war jobs because ‘‘of all
our free country, this is the freest
country with the most peace.”
I its unifying agent is a Mormon
| prophet who might be out of
Old Testament, the Book of Mor
mon. Beowulf, the Koran, or just
somebodv’s head.
i
But the book is strange. It is
about the most American part f
• America for example, yet it is
written by a German only a few
years on these shores, written ;n
German at that and splendidly
| translated by Richard Win-,
stofi. Translating such a book, ne
that hangs always between the
epic and the homely, must have
' been a chore of parts.
.And the method is so German
I ic as to call up a smile, now and
I then. Its introductory scenes are
j drawn with Germanic attention
| to detail, its Messiah is brought
i in. and then all the people sc
'ruthlessly introduced are strunc
j together on the thread of the
| prophet’s vision, which takes
j him in turn into the lives of them
I all. At the end the reader has a j
i fabulous bundle of impressions
\ fitted together as carefully as
Herr Haushofebs goepolitical
| concepts in which Jeremiah the
Saant is the hero, the locusts
the villain, and the whole is an
allegory of the human race and
its unending struggle.
And as is so often the case
case when a man is so complete
ly absorbed in his subject the
o A A.A. A. AiLAJuLA A-.v. v A. A.A. JL4»4i
fffeet is food. The Mormons
their plateau, watching the
custs eat up their future, are a
er all people just like the Gt
mans who watch Hitler gor
himself on the blood of their u
born children. Jeremiah they s
upon just as men have set up<
prophets since men left off swin
ing from tree to tree by the
tails. The dancing girl who b
came a farmer’s wife, the o,
Jewish tinware peddler, ti
.orse-thief—a 11 of them are hi
r?n sometimes almost tangibl
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MAIN 33
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PACKAGES REACH PRISON CAMP—Her* a proup of
American prisoners of war held at Stalapiuft III-B. in Germany la
ahown with cartons of A meric:! n P-d Cross Prisoner of War Package*.
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January, 1941.
LITERARY
GUIDEPOST
By JOHN SELBY
THE LOCUSTS” by Otto
Schrag (Farrar & Rinehart, $3)
There are so many odd fea
tures to Otto Schrag’s “The Lo
custs" that a casual reader might
be forgiven for losing sight of
the author’s objective. The book
is actually a study of the Great
Plains and contiguous territory
under a bLight. the blight being
the locust. It is a panorama nov
el. in which many different peo
ple and settings are used, and
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