A true adven­ture, first record­ed for fam­ily, now in reply to requests, in book form.

A Knuck­le­head in 1920s Alas­ka — At age eighty-eight, William (Bill) Collins record­ed his adven­tures as a young man of nine­teen who trav­eled to Alas­ka to earn mon­ey for col­lege. In the 1920s he found adven­ture, but not much mon­ey, work­ing in the rail­road yards, in mines, as a pearl div­er (dish­washer), and any­thing else between.

Dur­ing three sum­mers and one win­ter, Bill sur­vived hunger, earth­quake, stomp­ing cari­bou, and ici­cle frost. He learned about stopes, sluice box­es, pow­der smoke, and the Fes­ti­val of the Mid­night Sun. He found friends who would face a bear for him and ene­mies eager to knife him. Bill had one lucky day and more than a few real­ly bad days.

This is the sto­ry of Norma’s dad before she ever knew him. In his own words, he was a true knuck­le­head.

Com­ments:     “An inter­est­ing account of a young man try­ing to over­come the many obsta­cles he encoun­tered while trav­el­ing in the young state of Alas­ka in the 1920s. He sur­vived because he got a few lucky breaks, which he used to his advan­tage.

“The author goes into great detail, which gives the read­er a true pic­ture of what life was like in the wilder­ness of Alas­ka. It’s appro­pri­ate for the gen­er­al read­er. Tru­ly a his­toric and infor­ma­tive piece.” Ama­zon Review

“Bil­l’s real life adven­ture work­ing in 1920’s Alas­ka is not only real­ly fun­ny and sur­pris­ing­ly fresh, it takes you back to a time that most of us can’t even imag­ine liv­ing — with­out mod­ern con­ve­niences. Bill lives up to the title of ‘Knuck­le­head’ as he impro­vis­es his way in and out of sit­u­a­tions in his own spe­cial way. A real fam­i­ly friend­ly book for all ages! Plus his­tor­i­cal­ly valu­able for remem­ber­ing Bil­l’s gen­er­a­tion and what it took to sur­vive Alas­ka some thir­ty-five years before it became a U.S. State.”      Ama­zon Review

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