Last Frontier Tales
He Had It Coming
By Hank Nuwer
Dan Berger was an Alaska sourdough who never struck it rich. He came to Alaska from Who Knows Where in 1897. He raced, too late, to every announced new gold strike.
Finally, in 1906, he made his way to the Fairbanks area. He staked a claim with his partner. They claimed to have found some coarse gold nuggets, according to the Fairbanks Daily Times of October 2, 1906.
But it was hardly a bonanza. Nonetheless, Berger decided the area was home. He put up a cabin before winter hit.
Berger wanted to quit trying to pull minerals out of the earth.
So, he invested in putting seed potatoes into the earth.
The lifelong bachelor became known for the size and quality of his spuds.
At the third annual Tanana Valley Farmers Market food event in 1912, his taters took first-place over second-place Sunnyside Gardens.
A group of nine local farmers and ranchers in 1913 founded the Tanana Valley Growers’ Association. Berger became one of the first members.
Our story takes a digression in 1915. That’s when Miss Margaret E. Carpenter and Miss Henrietta A. Mirick settled in Fairbanks and served as faculty for the city’s frame schoolhouse at Cushman and 8th Street.
Mirick also volunteered her time as librarian for a struggling library kept going by a group of women known as the Civic Club.
Old timers mocked these “Do Gooder ladies.” The Civic Club persevered.
In addition to the George C. Thomas Memorial Library, the club started a Fairbanks garden for kids and campaigned to rid the streets of trash.
By 1916, the Fairbanks Daily Times sung its praises. “The Civic club was a joke when it started,” wrote an editorial writer. “Many thought that it would be an organization of women who would sit in judgment upon everything that the town did, criticize everyone and generally be meddlers.
“The Civic club today is the one organization in Fairbanks that has never taken up anything that did not benefit the community, and that has never made a failure of anything that it has taken up.”
In a May, 1916 report, the librarian reported that 340 books had recently been checked out. This included 275 fiction books, nine literary works, 43 history books, five economics texts, four religious tomes and two art books.
Readers included 47 juveniles and 293 adults.
The library cleared ground for parking. Members planted grass and flowers. The library installed an alcove for writers and rooms for the Civic Club and Red Cross to hold meetings.
Nonetheless, the of Fairbanks did struggle, and the club ladies could only put it just so much of their own time and donations. But that is a column for another week.
We return now to our hero Dan Berger.
Berger liked to gamble. And in 1916, he won a big bet on President Woodrow Wilson beating opponent Charles Evans Hughes.
On December 28, 1916, he told the Juneau Empire he was headed to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson with his newfound wad of cash.
Berger claimed President Wilson was an old friend of his.
When he returned to Fairbanks, the library hired him as its janitor. He worked that job for an indefinite time.
Right around then, the Do-Gooders won a ban on alcohol. Yep, the city went dry, according to the Weekly Alaska Citizen of Fairbanks.
That’s when Dan Berger found that if it weren’t for bad luck, he’d have no luck at all.
At 10 a.m. on January 13, 1918, the fire department responded to a call that Berger’s cabin roof was on fire.
“Great clouds of smoke rolled up for a time, and it looked like a very serious blaze from up town,” the Weekly Alaska Citizen reported.
The fire department acted fast. Firefighters saved Berger’s cabin and its contents.
Later, he probably wished the whole shebang went up in smoke.
For on May 20, 1918, the Weekly Alaska Citizen of Fairbanks had a scoop.
The library reported a theft, and it wasn’t an overdue book.
“Dan Berger in custody with grave charge,” read the bold enlarged headline.
Local authorities charged the former janitor with stealing a sack of sweater yarn and a second sack of sock yarn belonging to the local Red Cross.
Worse, authorities searched his cabin and found the missing yarn in the company of a cache of illegal hootch.
Now, we all know justice is blind, but it isn’t week. A yarn collector with no self-control is clearly a danger to the community, by golly.
Authorities hauled old Berger to jail on felonious theft charges and for violating the liquor ban. “The offense with which he is charged is punishable by a sentence of from one to seven years,” noted a Fairbanks paper.
Dan Berger made no attempt to “pullover” the wool over anyone’s eyes. Berger pleaded guilty in the commissioner’s courtroom.
Said he hoped to knit a few garments.
And that he’d stored away 12 bottles of booze back when the city was wet.
First, the commissioner fined him $500 for storing the hootch. If you’re keeping score at home, that came to $41.67 per bottle.
Berger said he was unable to pay the fine. The magistrate ordered him to serve 250 days instead of the fine.
Dan Berger broke into tears in court, the paper reported.
That’s when the prisoner learned that after serving that first sentence, he faced 365 days more in jail for swiping the yarn.
The jailbird had time to purl to his heart’s content.
Berger ended up doing less time. Perhaps some old pal like Woodrow Wilson covered all or part of his fine.
The federal jail of the Fourth Division released the jailbird from custody after about 11 months, reported The Cordova Times on April 17, 1919.
“He says he has profited by his experience and will travel the straight and narrow path in the future,” noted the Cordova Times.
I guess Berger found the old adage to be true: “Knit happens.”
Hank Nuwer of the Cordova Times won third place for Best Profile in this year’s Alaska Press Club awards contest.