Word: matanuska
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...women and children, arms laden with bundles, eyes filled with bewilderment and doubt. What they saw gave them no cause for rejoicing: a bleak wilderness surrounded by stern, snowcapped mountains, and in the wilderness a dismal tent city sprawling in the mud under a dour sky. This was the Matanuska Valley, 50 miles northeast of Anchorage, in south-central Alaska. This was the promised land-promised by the wide-eyed Federal Emergency Relief Administration to depression-ridden, red-blooded American families who wanted to leave home and make their way, in fine old American tradition, against the wilderness. This...
Cars were halted in two half-mile-long lines at the Matanuska Valley town of Palmer. Blankets and C-rations were assigned, though not actually issued. But mechanics inspected every gas tank, oil gauge, transmission, differential, battery, oil filter, radiator and tire to make sure everything was in working order. Soldiers handed out dummy orders and authorized mock money allotments, and women were instructed on driving in convoys for the sake of safety...
Last week Harry J. Baker was in Matanuska, while officers at army posts and naval bases throughout the territory clamored for his services. Wherever he goes, people stop him on the street, begging for appointments. Within the past month, traveling by PT boat, barge and sub chaser, he has ranged as far as Adak in the Aleutians...
...that the Matanuska colonists have had their spuds and fodder snowed under (TIME, Oct. 23, p. 19), we look forward to another epidemic of new sob stories drooling over the hardships for which this region is celebrated...
Last week this Broadway drama of hardships was bleak reality. As the farmers of Matanuska Valley, after four years' uneven struggle against mounting debts for machinery and equipment supplied by the Government, prepared to reap the best harvest in years and write off some of their obligations, an Arctic blast sent the mercury down to 10° below zero. Potatoes froze in the field, 80% of the grain stood in the field, unharvested and ruined, acres of market produce were destroyed, and under a foot and a half of snow the Valley lay in white, stricken silence...