My Life in Alaska So Far by June A. Robinette
Contributed to Make A Scene Magazine by Teresa Ascone
June 15, 2009
June Robinette’s autobiography, packed with adventure, tragedy, hardship and humor, is told in a direct narrative style that holds our attention right to the book’s end.
As she recounts her young girlhood on an Oregon homestead, we are engrossed in her stories of day to day chores and living on the land in the early 1900s, a time when country people labored from dawn until night with basic tasks just to have food and shelter. Through the ingenuity of her parents, the family thrived and grew to include three daughters. When June was 13 years old her father deserted them, leaving only her mother to eke out a life for her girls as best she could. The first chapter tells of that Oregon homestead life as June grew into young womanhood. Then, while working in Bellingham, she met and married a handsome stranger, Grady Robinette: a “long, tall Texan with a southern drawl, ” and that’s when the real adventure began.
The resourceful young couple lived a vagabond life, and had three children as they traveled from place to place. They worked in a fascinating variety of jobs as they obeyed the lure of living “on the road.” June had an artistic bent, and helped them get to the next place by painting signs while Grady used his talents in other odd jobs like milking goats, carpentry or boat work. They journeyed to Wasilla, Alaska, and Grady found a log cabin they could stay in.  Feasting on fresh vegetables grown in the Matanuska Valley, they made furniture from Blazo boxes. A Kerosene lantern illuminated the cozy cabin. Hankering to see more of Alaska, they traveled to Nome, where they opened a café and served Grady’s Texas chili.
Nome was home for 4 years during World War II, after which they cast their fortunes on the road again and left Alaska. While performing skits in the Vaudevillian circuits, June and Grady left their children in “charity places.”  As they wandered, searching for jobs and struggling to get by, their children were taken from them and put up for adoption. Grady never saw them again.
The Robinettes eventually ended up back in Alaska, homesteading on a small lake in Wasilla. Time passed and they had many adventures, recounted in detail by the author as she reminisces about old-time Alaska and what it was like to live in the Last Frontier.
June tells her fascinating story with humor and matter-of-factness. We sense her sincerity; she is determined to be joyful and optimistic no matter what life brings, even recounting her harrowing rape, which takes place in her own home at the hands of two young miscreants, with a brave, stoic dignity. There is no melodrama in her story, yet she communicates the real-life, genuine drama of a life lived to the fullest.