| Summary: | Alaskans Hit 1935 At Speed: New Year Dances Last Weeks From Christmas As Northerners Celebrate./Big Balls Are Staged./Men Mush Miles To Bright Lights And Stay “Till Last Dog Is Hung – All Kinds Of Weather. ALASKANS HIT 1935 AT SPEED New Year Dances Last Weeks From Christmas as Northerners Celebrate. BIG BALLS ARE STAGED Men Mush Miles To Bright Lights And Stay “Till Last Dog Is Hung - All Kinds Of Weather SEATTLE, Dec. 31. (/P)—A bunch Of the boys were whooping it up in Alaskan roadhouses today—in fact, they'd been celebrating the new year since Christmas, as is the custom among trappers and prospectors of the far north. The whooping intensified today, though, because wireless broadcasts of New Year's celebrations from all over the world came booming in. Paradoxically, Alaska starts celebrating first, but actually welcomes the infant 1935 last, because the international date line runs right through Bering strait. All Sorts of Fun. Sedately in the cities, with evening dress and all the amenities; boisterously in the backwoods, with fur parkas and rough music, all Alaska celebrated. The backwoods jubilations started just before Christmas because fur trappers and prospectors, having hitched their male-mutes and mushed many miles to the , nearest taverns and villages, didn't want to go home until the "last dog was hung" and the last bottle emptied. Some came in by ski-shod airplanes. So dances last two weeks in the far north at such places as Fort Yukon When the dancers tire, they stop and sleep, to come back refreshed to the jubilation. There was no lack of ingredients for the punchbowl, but there never has been. As Frank Cotter, mining man and newspaper publisher, put it today: "Alaska never was much impressed by the Volstead law, as we are a forthright people and little given to evasions." Big Balls Begin. In Fairbanks, Juneau, Anchorage and Nome the biggest social events of the year started tonight—the balls of .fraternal societies and the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers. Their time is three hours later than Pacific coast time, so they will be last to welcome 1935. In the interior there have been several disagreements about the date already—there always are, when men go into the wilderness alone, and mix up their calendars. But they're all celebrating, and with reason. In 1934 President Roosevelt's price of $35 an ounce for gold sent the territory on its way back to prosperity, with almost $17,000,000 of the yellow metal produced In the year, and they expect 1935 to be better. . Choose Your Weather Far up north, in the land of the midnight sun, it's just a little after midwinter, and the sun is beginning to appear faintly above the horizon I at noon. Down south, on the Coast, they are picking violets and late chrysanthemums, because of the mild winter. Up north prospectors have tied their husky dogs out in the snow to fight over frozen fish while their masters dance the old year out. Down south, they ride to the ballrooms in automobiles, and the ladies use light evening wraps.
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