Start the New Year Right!
Put a
| VICFROLA
In Your Home
vt %
[northern DRUG CO.
3!l|i|!l!II!!illlltllill!ll .. ■
|Every Article
In My Store; Makes
A Suitable Gift
and I Have thousands of
them for Young and Old.
Come in and inspect our selected stock
for the Holiday trade
1 PAUL BLOEDHORN
JEWELER AND WATCH MAKER
KENDRICK BUILDING FIRST STREET
THE CITY BAK ERY
WE ARE SPECIALISTS IN. FINE CAKES AND PASTRY
FOR feu.
Parties and Receptions
MAKERS OF THE FAMOUS .“CREAM LOAF” BREAD
SUN “MA1D” RAISIN BREAD—A TREAT INDEED
RYE BREAD GRAHAM BREAD
LUNCH ROOM -WH iRE YOU GET THOSE EXCELL
ENT LUNCHES
SAYE MONEY!
COME TO THE BARGAIN STORE
And see wliat we have in the line of workmen’s clothing,
beds, mattresses and canvas goods of all kinds, tents and
; shovels, kitchenware, furniture, stoves, etc. We also
carry a full line of mirrors—plate glass and plain.
THE NORTHERN BLOCK
| First Street
Copper River
& Northwestern Ry.
FOUR TRAINS WEEKLY BETWEEN
CHITINA AND KENNECOTT
Leave Cordova, Second Street Depot, on Mon
days, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Leave Chitina for Cordova Sundays, Tuesdays
days, Thursdays and Fridays.
Leave Chitina for Kennecott Sundays, Tues
days and Fridays.
Leave Kennecott for Chitina Mondays, Wednes
days, Thursdays and Saturdays.
The above schedule subject to change with
out notice.
Dining Car in Connection With all Regular
Passenger Trains Between Cordova and Chitina.
Freight received and delivered at Cordova
Wharf from 9 a. no. to 5 p. m., except Sundays.
Tickets on sale at Second Street Depot
office, one hour before departure‘of trains.
CALEB CORSER, W. E. BROWN,
Superintendent. Agt. Cordova Wharf
R. K. BROWN, Jr., Ticket Agent.
t
LIFE ON A TRANSPORT
AS A SOLDIER SEES IT
:• This is a real account of life aboard
:• an American transport. It is all very ^
:• well for the accredited correspond
:• ents, who crosse de luxe, to send back
a cheery message to the effect that,
•: except for a few cases of mumps,'
:: »
% a pleasant time was had by all, but
•: I
:j if you want to know what transport
:• life it like you must ask a private
;• who has lived in the bowels of a
:• converted liner, meditated upon it in
>: the long, tranquil hours of midnight
sentry duty, and jotted down in his
optimistic, freshly acquired diary be
?: tween exercise and boat drill, between
•:j mess and boat drill, between circu
x lation and boat drill. Here, then, are
some brief notes of life aboard a name
less American transport which set
= sail from an American port some time
ii;! . .
in August to cross a certain widely
known ocean:
We foregathered from the four
quarters of the United States, meet
ing for the first time at the pier, as,
weighted down under our equipment,
1 harnessed in our blanket rolls, and
staggering under our bulging barracks
bags, we toiled slowly up the fo;-'
midable gangways. We all looked
pretty much alike that day, and it
was not until we had put out to sea,
; and the swarming hive have settled
down under the subdued pressure of
strict military discipline, that any one
of us could realise what an extraor
dinary miscellany of men had come
aboard.
i nose lean fellows lounging there
1 at the base of the rigging are un
mistakably cowboys, and probably
from Oklahoma; standing against the
rril beside them, a student of Matisse
. is talking with a weather-beaten
- trainer of prizefighters; the actor
who enchanted New York with his
■brilliant and fastidious performance
of the Daffodil in “The Yellow Jack
et” is now, with equal skill, charg
ing along the promenade deck, lead
ing a small squad armed with brooms
to clean out the gutter. That man
washing his mess tin in some no long
er useful wishwater is smoking a Un
ion Ueague cigarette in his own right
and bestowing one, apparently, on an
■elevator hoy of his acquaintance.
Z ’Way forward on the forecastle deck,
- their heads silhouetted against the
twilit sky, a group of Princeton boys
are singing “Forward March” tnuch
as they sang it last fall in the Palm
er Stadium hack home. There are
some men reading in what is left of
the afternoon sunlight. One has a
small copy of “Fluent French
Phrases,” or some such treatise, by
which h|, is invading for the first
time the mysteries of “je suiis, tu es
and fl est.” Next to him a man is
/
~ ' ouring over the last issue of "Breezy
- Stories.” and the man beyond is deep
in Browning’s “The Ring and the
Book.” You never can tell. And when
the lights go down and the hush falls
on the ship they break into little
groups, to whisper of this or that, to
talk of the American league, or theo
sophy, or Frances White, or any sub
ject under the sun except the war.
That they leave to those who are on
the outside looking in.
They have all weathered the voy
age well, philosophically setting down
the limitations of their comrorts to
the exigencies of a great country in
a still greater hurry. Some grumb
ling there is, to he sure, but it is
a little like the grumbling of boys
at boarding school, when, for the sev
enth successive day, it is prunes again
for breakfast.
I
No Smoking After Sundown.
Of course there have been bitter
hardships. It is a hitt-sr hardship, fori
instance, to have to stop smoking at
sundown, but it would never do to
have a thousand or so of cigarette
tips glowing away until the dim gray,
transport took on the air of a golden j
galleon It is a hitter hardship, also,
tor some to go merely as members of|
ail impromptu jazz band to the dances
I
where the officers and nurses foSt it
featly in the main saloon. But, great
est privation of all, you are sternly
forbidden aboard a transport to yell
execessively at the hushed boxing
boxing matches between the engineers
and a hospital corps, say. You may
not join in the leathern-lunged cries
by which one naturally expresses one's
emotions in such an hour. You are
not allowed to roar out “Paste him
wan in the puss”—or, at least, not
too many of you at once. You may
not even say “Attaboy'’ in chorus. It
is very hard.
The officers, non-commissioned of
ficers, (some of them,) and the
t
nurses take up the first and second
cabins. The troops are packed below
in quarters that accommodate about
150 each, dim fit dormitories that
vaguely recall at night the opium den
scene In “The Man Who Caine Back,”
the men sleeping in tiers of three ex
cept for those sufficiently alert to take
up their shelt.er-halfs, ponchos, blank
ets and life-preservers and stake out
an early claim for six feet each of
deck space. After sundown the decks
are litterally carpeted with men in
alive drab, those sleeping forward on
the forecastle deck being prudent
enough to lash their shoe laces to the
iron work lest they roll off in the
dark of the moon and be forever rank
ed as deserters.
Sunrise Bath Under the Hose,
On deck, too, the men spread out
for mess unless the day be rainy,
supplementing the regular fare with
such delicacies as they can find at
the canteens aboard or as they may
have smuggled on deep down in their
barracks bags. On deck, also, the
men bathe. At least in one transport
they bathe on deck, emerging at chill
sunrise to dance uneasily in front ol
a streaming hose wielded by a deck
hand, whose rich reward for his trou
•hie is the pleasure of filling with sail
~ f
water the occasional shoes left care
lessly within his reach. Sometimes yoi
may see an entire battery behnf
drench at one moment; it is like i
much multiplied picture of the ol(
swimming hole.
There is a good deal of work aboart
a transport. The various detachment!
have their organizations to perfec
en route, and in the quondam smokin;
room of happier days there can nov
be heard the click of many typewrit
ers. There there is the big business
of keeping the troops fed and of keep
lug them and the ship herself clean
There is plenty of work to do, betweer
boat drills and inoculations.
But is It not all work. There are
amusements aplenty—mostly cards
There are some rather frenzied game?
of craps and banker-and-broker, ae
companied by bent heads, groans
curses and heathenish incantations,
fir, rather, there were such games,
until word of them went alof;, and
there came down an ominous order
forbidding all gambling of any kind.
Then there are rubbers of bridge,
plaved with the understanding that
the winners will dine sometime at
the expense of the losers at some
boulevard cafe somewhere in France,
there are tournaments, too, of bridge
ar>(l pinochle, leading toward prizes
offered by the commanding officer.
It is no easy thing, by the way, to
play cards with the deck as a table
when the wind Is taking such an in
terest in the game that It is madness
to let a card out of your hand for
a moment. Just when you have bid
no trumps, you are likely suddenly
to lone three aces and an unguarded
king.
Then there are entertainments
ivorked up for the hour before sun-1
set. a group of volunteer vocalists
is likely to assemble any evening In
the forward spar deck and burst in
0 s°ng. Last night it may have, been j
* minstrel show given by the I WO
hospital units. The night before it
"as a vaudeville bill with every art
I
j
1st • graduate nurse—a triumphant
success, by the way with gum drops
and cigarettes thoughtfully provided
for the sentries who could not come,
for those who could come there was,
among other things, one hilarious num
ber that burlesqued the officers at
morning exercises.
Every Group Has Its Mascot
There should be a paragraph, too,
about the pets, for every group has
its mascot. There are some amiable
bulldogs in sight at times, a wisp of
a gray kitten and an absurd morsel of
a puppy—variously known as Lberty
and Gumdrop—who have added much
to the gayety of the village by learn
ing to walk for the first time on a
rolling deck. But best of all, some of
us think, is Hardware, the mascot of
a certain base hospital, which was
smuggled aboard by the simple de
vice of drugging her mildly and car
rying her on asleep in a haversack.
When the Saratoa was rammed—for
some of those aboard had originally
set sail on that luckless old craft
tile French cook, who had kept a fath
erly eye on Hardware in pamp, went
calmly to the depths of the ship to
rescue "le petit chien de bonne ati
gure.” Hardware appears to have en
joyed her second voyage, and yet
there must have been times when the
military life palled somewhat, for
there are two charges of attempted
suicide against her. Each time she
plunged from her bunk, only to dangle
gasping by her chain until the French
cook, pausing in the midst of a song
by Massenet, would rush forward cry
«
ing: "Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! il faut
garder la morale!”
So it goes—between boat drills. Of
these there are many, and they come
so often that, when the day arrives
to don life-preservers and keep them
on for the rest of the voyage, the
familiar signal brings every man tc
his post in a few moments. Those
who are assigned to rafts rather thar
to lifeboats are allowed to make them
selves grotesque and bulky in the
celebrated life saving suits. When, it
• the early hours before sunrise, a pro
cession of these strangely-clad, heavy
footed beings appear in the ghostl
half-light, it resembles nothing in th
world quite to much as the entranc
of the gods in "The Gods of the Moui
tain.”
Sister Transports Near at Hand.
And from our post by. boat or raf
| though the tension may have bee
visibly increased bv the alarms c
[
those with a keen sense of humoi
i
we can look comfortably across th
little patch of water to the neares
transport. It seems like a friend's
close at hand. It seems no furthe
away than the distance of the Knicl
erbocker from the Times Buildini
back home, although, in reality, yoi
cannot distinguish the faces of thi
men on her decks. But it is nea
enough to make these voyages unliki
any that Americans have known be
fore. For there is nothing lonesome
about them.
It is a great thing to come up or
the deck in the early morning and
watch the sister ships of the little
gray, slow-moving armada emerge “ir
gradual beauty and significance” af
the light comes out of the east. And
it is a still greater thing one day to
watch, from amid the jostling, jubil
ant throng on the forecastle deck, the
first appearance far ahead of us ot
the fleet destroyers come to welcome
us and guard us all the test of the
way.
-«
All bingles issued by the Horseshoe
must be turned in before January 1
or they will be repudiated.
TAX NOTICE.
Notice is hereby given that the
town taxes for the town of Cordova
for the year 1917, are now due and
payable to the undersigned at this of
fice. Said taxes will be delinquent
at 6 p. m., on Monday, February 11th,
1918, and unless paid prior thereto,
five per cent will be added to the
amount thereof.
THOS. S. SCOTT,
j
Town Treasurer
Dec. 22-Jan. 6
On and after January 1 the barbers
I hav* decided to raise their prices, oa
account of the increased cost of suj»
! plies and cost of living. tf
--+
There are fourteen kinds of fruit
in the City Bakery’s Christmas Fruit
Cakes,
---O
Fine pastry with fresh whipping
cream—just received—City Bakery.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
| _
1 In th0 Probate Court for the Terri
tory of Alaska, Third Division. val
dez Precinct, at Valdez, in Probate,
In the matter of the Estate of
Robert D. Gray, Deaceased. No. 173.
The undersigned, having on the
1 30th day of November, 1917, been
' appointed executor of the estate of
Robert D. Gray, Deceased, notice is
hereby given to the creditors of and
all persons having claims against de
ceased or his estate, to exhibit them
| with the necessary vouchers, within
■ six months after the first publication
! of this notice to said executor at his
L
office and place of business in Cor
dova, Alaska, the same being the
place for the transaction of business
for said estate in the Territory o
Alaska. The first publication of this
notice is published on the 6th day of
December, 1917.
JAMES SMITH
Executor of the Estate of Robert D.
Gray, Deceased.
First publication December 6, 1917.
| Last publication December 31, 1917.
M. C. Thompson, H. C Murphy
I
tUhr iiinat
Thompson & Murphy, Props.
Dealers in *
WINES, LIQUORS AND
CIGARS
Phone 107.
-------
LET
!j MADAME
LYDIA-=
iUIre Palmist
'
i Read Your Character and
t'j Destiny
SIDE ENTRANCE NEXT
TO FRUIT MARKET
■--J
t The I
I ♦ ♦
j Northern l
WINES !
i: LIQUORS |
If AND *
|i CIGARS |
ICall at the f
POPULAR CORNER t
First Avenue and C Street ♦
♦
CORDOVA!
MACHINE WORKS
E. R. GARNES, Prop.
Residence Shop
Phone 101-3. Phone 182
Machine Wo: k of all Kinds,
Blacksmithing, General Repair
ing, Horse Shoeing, OxyAcety
lene Welding and Cutting.
HARMON MACHINERY
BUILDING
Cordova, Alaska,
Out of Town Jobs Given Strict
Attention.