MARLA:  Were there ever times that you wanted to quit? 

ROSE:  Yeah. 

MARLA:  And what made you stay? 

ROSE:  TCC.  I'm about ready to quit, and they tell me that if you stick it out until you're age 65, then you will be eligible to receive that insurance, Great West Life.  So I'm going to quit today, and then I hang in there again for how long, for how long, then I'm barely going, so I thought, oh, I'll quit.  And it went on and on like that. 

So now I was -- I passed my birth date, age 65, and then there was nobody to work at the clinic, just the alternates. 

So I'm around here and I -- there was a primary one hired there, and then she called me, so I go back there and I help her.  I do all the complicating ones. 

And sometimes I work one whole day and I could -- I think I could report it, you know, send my time sheet, but I never send it.  Sometimes I send it.  Sometimes I don't send it.  Yeah. 

But I was really happy when I retired.  Really happy to be free.  I just get on top of my Honda and bang, up the road I went.  I got my 22 and I'm looking for spruce hens, I'm looking for berries, I got my campfire teapot, I'm free in the world. 

Just like I think like this.  This is the kind of road we travel, on our way to heaven.  That kind of thought come to my head.  Gee, I'm on a clean road, trees on both sides, pretty land, pretty trees.  I'm just in a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful road.  Beautiful country.  And it is.  It is. 

But was I ever happy to just be free.  I could just take off across the river, set fishnet, I'm free.  I could just stay down there in my garden, I could water it, I could do what I want to it and grow plants, grow vegetables.  I'm free, at last. 

MARLA:  Yeah. 

ROSE:  But it was pretty bad, you know.  When we have to be pent down night and day for so many years.  I don't think I took much leave.  I don't think -- I didn't take no leave.  When I quit working, I had so much leave hours, I forgot what happened.  I think they gave me the money.  I think I got paid.  I had too much leave hours. 

MARLA:  Well, it would be hard to leave because you're the only one who was here. 

ROSE:  Yeah.  That's the thing. 

MARLA:  Yeah. 

ROSE:  For about 20 years, I was working by myself in Huslia.  I didn't have no -- I didn't have no girl in front to answer the phones and all that, and do the travels for me.
 
There's lots of times I got to meet the airplane with my laboratory cultures and all that.  It's got to be on airplane, so at the other end, the clinic would pick it up for the -- for the laboratory.  But I was -- I was on Honda, you know. 

MARLA:  Yeah. 

ROSE:  So I do it in few minutes.  And I'm doing all the travels for the patients.  I'm going out to homes and I'm checking -- checking into medicines.  And I did that all by myself for about 20 years. 

And we were down -- we were down Anchorage and I said, well, I said, you know, I say, I -- I believe that instructors are hired for big monies.  That's to train us health aides.  All right.  We're health aides.  We go home and I said, we turn into an errand girl. 

That's true.  We had to run in and out of the clinic for our own self.  But we women out in the Bush were used of working and stuff like that.  We can -- we Athabascan women can tolerate anything tough, easy or tough.  We can tackle it.  That's how I done it. 

But I'm not the only one that feel like that.  All these Athabascan women all over the villages, we know, we know the tough life.  That means nothing is hard for us.  We can do it.  See?  We've been through a lot of stuff already.

Since we're kids, we know we see things, stuff happen, people die quick.  Probably for some, all they need was just medicine.  And there was burns, people die and a lot of stuff, all of us Athabascan, we faced up to it already.
 
So there today we are the health aides.  At least there's medicine there.

When I was born or when everybody was born back in twenties or thirties, there was no medicine.  That's what we call sad.  Baby will die, like nothing.  Lots of babies died, little infants.  No medicine. 

Today I'm here.  I'm 77 years old.  How I survived through the twenties and thirties and how -- how everybody came out of it way back, our mother and our father, how did we live, how did we made it, with no kind of baby shots.  No kind of baby shots whatsoever. 

So we -- we don't call it -- we don't call it tough.  We're happy.  At least the medicine is there.  That's one good word. 

And I'll say we were by ourself at first.  There was no White people among us.  But later on in our time, the White people are around.  So that means what?  We got help.  We got medicine.  And the ones that really opened doors were Public Health nurses, the ones that were travelling out in the Bush.  Gee whiz, I just wish I know -- I wish I could have kept the names of all the nurses.  Talk about kind.  Talk about well educated young ladies.