It is easy to talk about ‘the good old days.’ Unfortunately those memories are only about the ‘good’ times. There’s not a lot of romance in ugly memories. During the Alaska Gold Rush, for instance, 95% of the stampeders arrived broke, lived broke and came home broke.  If you were in Nome and stayed the winter, your living conditions were unbelievable miserable.  Nome had no forests so you either paid an EXTREMELY high price for lumber brought in my steamship or scavenged driftwood for a hovel like the one on the left. Most, men and women, spent the winter in a tent, like those on the right. Don’t forget, in Nome during the winter the sun comes up around 10 am and sets at 2.  Days of 30 below zero with blasting winds are not uncommon and if you miss the last steamboat out around September 15^th, you would not see another one until about June 10^th. Little wonder most people spent their winters in Nome in saloons and it is from those saloons that the legends of the ‘good old days’ originated. www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi