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Alaska: Treasured Pieces from the Last Frontier (with Jay Marquiss) · Stories That Live In Us

0:00
Jay Marquiss: The next thing, I know we were landing and it was a really hard landing and it was in snow and the plane was on skis and, anyway, they hand us the guns, hand us the guns.
0:10
Jay Marquiss: And we jumped out and we shot this moose and then, after of course they shot it, reality hit and we were stuck.
0:19
Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
0:26
Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
0:30
Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America Tales of immigration, migration, courage and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
0:51
Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover, from sea to shining sea, the stories that live in us.
1:00
Crista Cowan: I have been to Alaska three times.
1:03
Crista Cowan: The first time, it was a random day in the summer of 2013, when my brother called me up and said what are you doing next Tuesday?
1:11
Crista Cowan: I don't know.
1:13
Crista Cowan: Want to go to Alaska?
1:14
Crista Cowan: Okay, so we did.
1:16
Crista Cowan: It was over the 4th of July.
1:19
Crista Cowan: An interesting fact about Alaska on the 4th of July is it doesn't get dark and so they don't do fireworks, which was a little disappointing, but it was a lovely way to spend that holiday week with my brother and I fell in love with Alaska the glaciers, the ruggedness of it, the history, the people.
1:40
Crista Cowan: There was just so much about Alaska to love the people.
1:47
Crista Cowan: There was just so much about Alaska to love.
1:48
Crista Cowan: I took another trip a couple years later for my mom's 65th birthday, and then last summer.
1:50
Crista Cowan: If you remember the episode of the podcast with my nibblings, you know that when I had the opportunity to take all of them on a vacation, I chose Alaska and I was so excited to introduce them to that place.
2:03
Crista Cowan: Of course they've been to my house, they've seen the pictures in my bathroom of the glaciers that I took and they knew how special this place was to me and I was a little scared to introduce them to it, because you ever have that moment where you're like what if something I love isn't loved by the people I love, but they also, I think, fell in love with it.
2:24
Crista Cowan: Well, my guest today is my friend Jay, and Jay is a third generation Alaskan and he grew up doing all of the typical Alaskan things, thought he would spend his life in Alaska, but life had other plans.
2:40
Crista Cowan: Interestingly enough, as he tells his story, you'll hear about how he has brought a piece of Alaska with him wherever he's gone.
2:50
Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with my friend, jay Marquis.
2:53
Crista Cowan: Thank you so much for being here.
2:56
Crista Cowan: You and I have known each other.
2:58
Crista Cowan: We've been neighbors for like 20 years, yeah long time.
3:01
Crista Cowan: And I had no idea until recently that you grew up in Alaska.
3:04
Crista Cowan: Yeah, so tell me what was?
3:06
Crista Cowan: I've been to Alaska three times, love it so much, but what was it like to?
3:10
Jay Marquiss: grow up there and it depends on which part of Alaska you visited.
3:13
Jay Marquiss: Well, I've been to.
3:14
Crista Cowan: Anchorage and Juneau, okay, and then, of course, cruising through the inside, because Juneau is completely different than Anchorage.
3:20
Jay Marquiss: I mean it's like from here to Texas kind of thing.
3:22
Jay Marquiss: I grew up in Anchorage, I was born and raised there and lived there all my life.
3:27
Jay Marquiss: I expected to live there the rest of my life.
3:31
Jay Marquiss: I met Kim, my wife of course, at BYU.
3:35
Jay Marquiss: We married.
3:36
Jay Marquiss: We drove to Alaska for our honeymoon because we were broke.
3:40
Jay Marquiss: How long of a drive is that it's from Anchorage to Provo or Provo to Anchorage, it's 3,450 miles.
3:47
Crista Cowan: Which takes how long?
3:49
Jay Marquiss: The fastest I've done it I've driven it 13 times.
3:52
Jay Marquiss: The fastest I've done it is in three days, and that was just nonstop with a couple of roommates and we took, I think, five or six days, the two of us.
4:02
Crista Cowan: So 3,400 miles, is that longer up top to bottom than it is across the country?
4:08
Jay Marquiss: I think so Wow A little bit yeah.
4:10
Crista Cowan: Nobody has any concept of the size of Alaska, do they?
4:13
Crista Cowan: They?
4:13
Jay Marquiss: don't no.
4:14
Jay Marquiss: Two and a half times the size of Texas.
4:17
Jay Marquiss: It's massive and most of it's just wilderness.
4:19
Crista Cowan: Wow.
4:24
Jay Marquiss: And so, yeah, it's an adventure, but I didn't know any different.
4:26
Jay Marquiss: That's what.
4:26
Jay Marquiss: That's how I grew up.
4:26
Jay Marquiss: I grew up hunting.
4:27
Jay Marquiss: The weather was just normal to me.
4:29
Jay Marquiss: The long summers we would play into the night because it never got dark, and then winters you were used to the darkness, and so that's how I grew up.
4:40
Jay Marquiss: So I expected to live my life there, married.
4:43
Jay Marquiss: Kim took her up there.
4:44
Jay Marquiss: She went through one winter and she said I'm not doing this.
4:46
Crista Cowan: Oh.
4:47
Jay Marquiss: So back to college, and we've never left.
4:50
Crista Cowan: Well, there you go.
4:50
Crista Cowan: So you were born there because your parents were living there.
4:53
Crista Cowan: What took your parents?
4:54
Jay Marquiss: there.
4:54
Jay Marquiss: My parents had adventurous parents.
4:56
Jay Marquiss: So my grandparents, both separately, just went up when they were newlyweds and or had young families.
5:05
Jay Marquiss: So my mother was born in Idaho, my dad in Oregon and their parents took them up when they were younger.
5:09
Jay Marquiss: They met in high school, became high school sweethearts and married right out of high school and lived there another 50 years, raised their family there.
5:17
Jay Marquiss: I love that.
5:17
Jay Marquiss: So yeah, and what was it that took your grandparents there?
5:18
Crista Cowan: Like they just decided to have an adventure.
5:19
Crista Cowan: They just decided to have an adventure.
5:20
Crista Cowan: Okay, and what was it that took your grandparents there?
5:22
Crista Cowan: Like they just decided to have an adventure?
5:24
Jay Marquiss: They just decided to have an adventure, okay, and just went up and and fell in love with it, and fell in love with it, okay, yeah.
5:30
Crista Cowan: And so your parents went in high school and you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
5:36
Crista Cowan: Yes, were you raised in that faith?
5:38
Crista Cowan: I was Okay.
5:45
Jay Marquiss: And were parents, and no, they were not.
5:46
Jay Marquiss: I'm not exactly sure when my grandfather joined the church, because I don't.
5:48
Jay Marquiss: I always thought he was, and my dad joined the church in about 1960 and after I was born, and that's part of this story, kind of thing.
6:02
Crista Cowan: Tell me about how your dad came to join the church.
6:04
Jay Marquiss: Well, I think the missionaries came over and introduced themselves and started to visit and my dad loved the missionaries.
6:11
Jay Marquiss: They always had them over, they fed them.
6:13
Jay Marquiss: They fed them for years and as a child I remember missionaries always coming to the house and they would always feed them.
6:20
Jay Marquiss: Dad joined the church but didn't really become active until the mid-60s kind of thing early to mid-60s and so always had a connection with missionaries.
6:35
Jay Marquiss: Because there was a missionary and he's instrumental in this story.
6:38
Jay Marquiss: His name was Pat Bryan and he was up in Alaska in 1959 and 60, I believe.
6:43
Crista Cowan: So right before your dad joined the church or about the same time?
6:46
Jay Marquiss: Yes, he was influential also, my dad joining the church.
6:50
Jay Marquiss: And he came back to Alaska and I met him in 1976.
6:57
Jay Marquiss: And he was a federal judge and he was coming up there to do some work.
7:02
Jay Marquiss: And he was coming up there to do some work and I came out of the ward building and we had back in those days we had three wards.
7:14
Crista Cowan: It was all we had, and then there was a ward in Fairbank which, in our faith, is a congregation.
7:17
Jay Marquiss: Is a congregation, yep, correct, and we just had one building.
7:20
Jay Marquiss: But I came out of the building and dad was talking to this man out on the front curb and I didn't know who he was.
7:29
Jay Marquiss: So I just walked up and stood there waiting for my dad and I had a question and we hadn't driven together but I had a question, so I was waiting and he turned and he said oh, let me introduce you to this man.
7:40
Jay Marquiss: This is Pat Bryan.
7:41
Jay Marquiss: He was a missionary here 25 years ago or whatever it was.
7:46
Jay Marquiss: And so he introduced me and dad said Jay is waiting for a mission call.
7:51
Jay Marquiss: I was going to go serve a two-year mission for the church and he said do you have your call?
7:56
Jay Marquiss: And I said no and he said I know where you're going.
7:59
Jay Marquiss: And I kind of looked at him and he said they just opened a mission in Utah.
8:04
Jay Marquiss: You're going to go to Utah.
8:06
Jay Marquiss: On a mission, on a mission, and I said they're all Mormons, I'll go anywhere but Utah.
8:11
Jay Marquiss: And sure enough, I got a call to Utah and came and served here.
8:17
Crista Cowan: But you got to meet this missionary.
8:18
Crista Cowan: That was influential.
8:18
Jay Marquiss: I got to meet this missionary, yeah.
8:21
Crista Cowan: So you served your mission in Utah.
8:22
Crista Cowan: You eventually come back to BYU.
8:24
Crista Cowan: You marry Kim.
8:26
Crista Cowan: She doesn't want to live.
8:27
Jay Marquiss: She doesn't want to live in.
8:28
Crista Cowan: Alaska.
8:30
Crista Cowan: Somewhere in there you became friends with Cody Hale Now Cody Hale for people who listen to the podcast.
8:36
Crista Cowan: If you remember, all the way back in episode two we talked to the Hale family because Grandma Hale, cody's mom she was adopted, and Lisa, my producer, and I helped to solve who her biological mother was.
8:50
Crista Cowan: And Lisa's friends with the Hale family and I, of course, you can't live in Utah and not know them.
8:56
Crista Cowan: So how did you and Cody become friends?
8:59
Jay Marquiss: So before we were married, kim and I, when I first came down to school, I went up to Sundance and thought this is beautiful, this reminds me of Alaska, kind of.
9:12
Jay Marquiss: And I was an avid skier and so I looked at buying a season pass and I thought, oh, $60, that's a lot of money at the time, and so I thought maybe I can get a job here.
9:25
Jay Marquiss: So I applied and became a ski instructor and that's how I met Cody and his wife, linda.
9:31
Jay Marquiss: They, she, also taught skiing there, and so we taught skiing together for almost 40 years and just became fast and close friends and dear friends.
9:40
Jay Marquiss: We've been friends for 40 years.
9:43
Crista Cowan: I love that.
9:44
Jay Marquiss: And it's just, it's just evolved into we've vacationed together.
9:49
Jay Marquiss: Um, and that becomes part of the story because they had a summer theater down at Capitol Reef National Park and so they had a ranch house down there where they would put up the cast.
9:59
Jay Marquiss: And the first time that was where I first met Ruth Hale and the first time that was where I first met Ruth Hale grandma In Alaska.
10:05
Jay Marquiss: I was a plumber and Cody said hey, we need to open, get the theater open this summer and we've got some problems with the bathrooms.
10:15
Jay Marquiss: Can you come down and do some plumbing for us?
10:18
Jay Marquiss: So went down there and was climbing around underneath the crawl space doing some plumbing and came out and met Grandma Hale and we sat and had a conversation and she wanted to know all about me and she said are you single?
10:32
Jay Marquiss: And I said no, I'm married and have family.
10:36
Jay Marquiss: And she goes oh, we could really use a plumber in the family and I've got some granddaughters that need to be married.
10:40
Crista Cowan: That sounds like Grandma Hale that sounds like Grandma Hale.
10:45
Jay Marquiss: She tried to marry me off right then, before she even knew if I had a family.
10:47
Jay Marquiss: And that's how we first met and that kind of became a tradition with Cody, Linda and some other friends and us that we would go down to the ranch house every year and hike and mountain bike and just enjoy the outdoors.
11:01
Jay Marquiss: And we all were ski instructors at Sundance and just good friends.
11:06
Jay Marquiss: We'd go down there.
11:06
Jay Marquiss: One of my assignments was, uh, when we went down we'd all share the food, cooking the meals, and my assignment was breakfast and so every year we would go down, or twice a year.
11:18
Jay Marquiss: Uh, I always did the breakfasts and sourdough pancakes were the breakfast.
11:24
Crista Cowan: Is that what you does?
11:24
Crista Cowan: That was the only thing you could make, or is that was just what you loved?
11:27
Jay Marquiss: Probably the only thing I could make at the time.
11:29
Jay Marquiss: And, uh, and everybody loved the sourdough pancakes and so, um, that's what we did and that's that's kind of part of this story.
11:37
Jay Marquiss: My, I got my, my sourdough starter from my parents when I went off to college and just kept.
11:45
Jay Marquiss: I loved sourdoughs.
11:47
Jay Marquiss: It was a tradition in our family.
11:48
Crista Cowan: You just kept feeding it.
11:49
Jay Marquiss: I just kept feeding it, yeah, and, and I made sourdough pancakes all the time.
11:53
Jay Marquiss: Back then I made a lot of sourdough bread as well.
11:56
Jay Marquiss: There were six of us from Alaska.
11:58
Jay Marquiss: We were all roommates and we'd all grown up together and we were roommates for years, several years together, until we started getting married.
12:09
Jay Marquiss: And I recall, with the sourdough starter, you mix it up, you feed it and let it sit and then you make your bread or your pancakes or whatever you're going to do.
12:17
Jay Marquiss: So if it was pancakes, I'd mix it the night before and then in the morning I'd mix up my pancakes.
12:24
Jay Marquiss: Of course, you take starter out for the next time.
12:26
Jay Marquiss: And I had early classes.
12:28
Jay Marquiss: I just remember this one morning I had early classes and so I had made sourdough so I could make some bread.
12:35
Jay Marquiss: Later in the day Went off to my classes.
12:38
Jay Marquiss: I came home, got ready to make bread, I went over to the bowl and it was covered with a towel.
12:43
Jay Marquiss: And I throw towel off and there's just a tiny bit of sourdough left in there, just enough for me to take out for my starter.
12:50
Jay Marquiss: And I'm like what the heck?
12:52
Jay Marquiss: So some of my roommates get home and I'm like you guys, what happened with my starter and they said well, we had pancakes before we went to school.
12:59
Jay Marquiss: And I'm like, are you kidding me?
13:02
Jay Marquiss: And I said all that was was flour, water and the starter, you guys.
13:06
Jay Marquiss: And they said we thought it tasted a little bad this morning.
13:09
Jay Marquiss: But we thought that's because we made them and not you, or we cooked them and not you, but there was enough, just enough for me to keep.
13:16
Jay Marquiss: And so ever since then I've always kept spare in case somebody forgets to take something out.
13:21
Jay Marquiss: But I've still had my original starter since 1976.
13:25
Crista Cowan: That's crazy.
13:26
Jay Marquiss: Yeah.
13:27
Crista Cowan: And so you'd go down to the ranch house and you would make the pancakes.
13:29
Jay Marquiss: And I would make the pancakes.
13:30
Jay Marquiss: Okay, yeah.
13:32
Crista Cowan: Well, so you had a surprise visitor at the ranch house once.
13:36
Jay Marquiss: At the ranch house and I don't know why it took me so many years to make a connection, but Pat Bryan had married one of the Hale daughters, sherry, and I'd known Pat and Sherry for years and never made the connection.
13:49
Jay Marquiss: Well, I shouldn't say I'd made it before this day, because of course, from the theater we would attend the theater and our youngest son, when he was little, did a couple of plays at the theater.
14:02
Jay Marquiss: He was a tiny Tim and then he was I don't recall the other one, but Sherry Bryan was his mother in one of the plays.
14:09
Jay Marquiss: And so we we had made, we knew and we made that connection.
14:12
Jay Marquiss: But uh, on one trip we were down there at the, at the, at the ranch, and so I'd be the first one to get up and start making the sourdoughs.
14:23
Jay Marquiss: Pat and Sherry were there visiting, which was unusual because when one family member was there with a group, others didn't come down.
14:31
Jay Marquiss: But he was recovering from some surgery.
14:33
Jay Marquiss: So he was there kind of recuperating and I was the only one up getting things ready and he came walking into the kitchen and sat down and we were having a conversation and he said sourdough pancakes.
14:44
Jay Marquiss: Huh, and I were having a conversation and he said sourdough pancakes, huh, and I said yeah.
14:47
Jay Marquiss: And he said where'd you get your starter?
14:49
Jay Marquiss: And I said well, I got it from my parents.
14:51
Jay Marquiss: He said do you know where they got it from?
14:54
Jay Marquiss: I said no idea.
14:55
Jay Marquiss: He said they got it from me, and I, and, and I, and I, I was blown away.
15:01
Jay Marquiss: I was literally blown away that this connection had happened from back in 1959, 60, when he was first there.
15:10
Jay Marquiss: That's when he originally got his starter, when he was a missionary.
15:13
Crista Cowan: And do you know who he got it from?
15:15
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, so then he told us the story, and so that's where we learned the genealogy kind of of our sourdough starter.
15:23
Crista Cowan: Because that's a thing.
15:25
Jay Marquiss: It is, it really is.
15:26
Jay Marquiss: So in 1959, when he was a missionary, he was in Ketchikan.
15:30
Crista Cowan: I've been to Ketchikan.
15:31
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, I have a great aunt who lived there.
15:33
Jay Marquiss: There we go and see, I grew up there my whole life.
15:35
Jay Marquiss: I've never been to Juneau or Ketchikan Okay, Different part of the state but he said he was.
15:41
Jay Marquiss: They'd go to this retirement home and he had met this, this old gold miner.
15:45
Jay Marquiss: He called him and he, in talking to him, found out that he had a sourdough and the retirement home was using it and keeping it alive for him and they would use it to bake.
16:00
Jay Marquiss: And so he talked to him about this and he, he found out from this, this man who was at the time 90 years old in 1959, that he had got it from an old they called the old guys sourdoughs.
16:13
Jay Marquiss: He'd got it from an old sourdough when he first came up to be a gold miner and so he wasn't exactly sure how old it was, other than he got it from this gold miner in 1897.
16:26
Jay Marquiss: And so he had had it from 1897 until 1959.
16:33
Jay Marquiss: So he'd had it about 60 years and he gave Pat a start from that and so Pat had had that all this time.
16:41
Crista Cowan: So he had kept it through his mission.
16:43
Jay Marquiss: He had kept it through his mission and after his mission.
16:45
Jay Marquiss: Okay, and, and still using the same original sour start.
16:50
Jay Marquiss: Sour to start to now.
16:51
Crista Cowan: So it's so.
16:52
Crista Cowan: It's what now?
16:53
Crista Cowan: Like at least 130 years old now.
16:55
Jay Marquiss: At least at least Cause he got it in 1897, and here we are 125, 30 years later.
17:02
Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
17:04
Jay Marquiss: And so it was like gold to them back in those days.
17:07
Jay Marquiss: That was their leavening agent and they did everything to keep it active and alive and not let it freeze and that and so yeah, and here you're sitting in a ranch house in southern Utah hearing this story for the first time.
17:19
Jay Marquiss: Hearing this story for the first time After years of having the start and my family, my parents, having to start finding.
17:26
Jay Marquiss: And my parents didn't even really know the backstory to it.
17:30
Jay Marquiss: They knew that they got it from Pat and of course then I called my parents up and I said, hey, I just learned.
17:35
Jay Marquiss: And they said, yeah, we got it from Pat.
17:37
Jay Marquiss: So I said, well, I never knew this and how that the irony of that whole coming around meeting him, my parents meeting him in 1959, 60, and then me meeting him in the 70s and then again.
17:53
Crista Cowan: And then you and Cody becoming friends, cody and I becoming friends and them being related Wow.
17:59
Jay Marquiss: Yeah and it was just it blew me away.
18:02
Crista Cowan: You know I love the way that lives kind of weave together in random touch points, right?
18:08
Crista Cowan: I mean even something as simple as like Ketchikan and my aunt living there, and like you and this sourdough starter.
18:15
Jay Marquiss: This is it right, this is it.
18:16
Jay Marquiss: This is 130 some odd years old.
18:20
Crista Cowan: How far has this gone from you?
18:24
Jay Marquiss: Like how many people have you shared this?
18:26
Jay Marquiss: I don't know A lot.
18:27
Jay Marquiss: In fact, we would leave one down at the ranch house so that I wouldn't have to carry it back and forth.
18:31
Jay Marquiss: And then somebody, if you let them sit for a while and they don't get used, they look pretty ugly.
18:35
Jay Marquiss: They separate.
18:36
Jay Marquiss: They'll separate after a week, but then after a time, if they don't get used, the liquid on the top kind of turns an ugly color.
18:46
Jay Marquiss: It looks pretty bad, unappetizing, unappetizing.
18:49
Jay Marquiss: But it can still be good, it can go.
18:51
Jay Marquiss: I've had them sit for months and months and months without using them.
18:54
Jay Marquiss: And I actually have.
18:55
Jay Marquiss: I have two that I use for bread, I have four that I use for sourdough pancakes, and then I still have some extras in the refrigerator on the garage.
19:05
Jay Marquiss: And so they'll.
19:12
Jay Marquiss: They just will last forever.
19:13
Jay Marquiss: Open them up, activate them or feed them once a while, and they'll just last forever.
19:16
Jay Marquiss: I've handed them out to I don't even know countless people that have said, oh, we'd love a start, and so I give it to them.
19:21
Jay Marquiss: And that was even before we knew the history.
19:23
Jay Marquiss: Now that we have the history, we also give them a little paper with the history on it as we give it out, and so now I'm going to get a little emotional.
19:35
Jay Marquiss: Good, because where it has gone is it's close to my heart, because, you know, we served a mission a little over a year ago and we were called to serve at the Mormon Italian Historic Site, which was best experience of our life.
19:54
Crista Cowan: Down in San Diego, in San.
19:55
Jay Marquiss: Diego, in Old Town, san Diego.
19:57
Jay Marquiss: What a wonderful, remarkable experience.
20:01
Jay Marquiss: That was the situation there is, there's three senior couples that work the site, and then it's also run by, or manned by, sister missionaries, and so there's plus or minus 24 sister missionaries there.
20:15
Crista Cowan: That are all what 19 to 21 years old.
20:18
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, well, they're 19 because it's their first assignment, and so it's different, because they're assigned to serve there for six months and then they go out to proselyting mission for the remainder year of their mission.
20:30
Jay Marquiss: And so for six months we work every day, all day, with these sister missionaries as they, as they'd, rotate in and out.
20:37
Jay Marquiss: We have a little over 50 grand young sister missionaries that just became like granddaughters to us.
20:42
Jay Marquiss: And while we were there, of course, I took my sourdough starter with us, and after it was about a month actually, before we got settled into an apartment and that and once we got settled in, we said, hey, why don't we invite sisters over for sourdough pancakes?
20:58
Jay Marquiss: And so we started.
21:00
Jay Marquiss: Each week sisters would come over for sourdough pancakes, and it just became this tradition that we did on our mission and the sisters loved it, and we had so many we didn't feed them all at the same time, so we'd have one apartment each week, and so they all got to come over at least once during each transfer.
21:16
Jay Marquiss: But they knew when we did it and so they would oh, could we borrow this?
21:23
Jay Marquiss: Just happened to find something they needed to borrow while we were feeding other sister missionaries and they'd step in and just grab pancakes off the plate, eat them with their hands, and it just became a fun tradition for us.
21:34
Jay Marquiss: So when we came home and the sister missionaries started also coming home, we decided we would get together.
21:43
Jay Marquiss: And so we have sourdough Sundays where sister missionaries that we coming home we decided we would get together, and so we have sourdough Sundays where sister missionaries that we served with come over and we try and do it once a transfer, so once every six weeks, and have them come over and we get together and have sourdough pancakes.
21:56
Jay Marquiss: And it's, it's such it's.
21:57
Jay Marquiss: It is so fun.
21:59
Jay Marquiss: I just I mean, I can't even express it because oftentimes sisters will come over and then they'll see others that they haven't seen since their mission or for over a year because they left and went different destinations.
22:12
Jay Marquiss: And it's just, it is so wonderful to see the reunions.
22:15
Jay Marquiss: So a lot of them have said can we have sourdough starter?
22:20
Jay Marquiss: Can we have sourdough starter?
22:21
Jay Marquiss: Can we have sourdough starter?
22:21
Jay Marquiss: So our tradition now has become, when they get married, that they get sourdough starter and a recipe from us for pancakes and for bread.
22:30
Jay Marquiss: And so we've had.
22:32
Jay Marquiss: We've had a half dozen of them get married so far and so they uh yeah get sourdough starter and and I've we've gotten messages and little Facebook things and pictures and text messages back holding their first loaf of sourdough bread or cooking pancakes and it's just, it's sweet to me that that tradition is kind of carrying on with somebody that's not even a family member, so that's just a tradition that's just continued.
23:00
Jay Marquiss: As well, as in my family I have grandkids that every Sunday, just like we used to or their parents did when they were young, they have sourdough pancakes on Sunday mornings.
23:10
Crista Cowan: I love that.
23:11
Jay Marquiss: And so the grandkids get up and fix sourdoughs on Sunday mornings, and so it's just a fun tradition that has just carried on in our family through what four generations now, and now it's carrying into other families the tradition.
23:29
Crista Cowan: And they all have the story to go with it.
23:30
Jay Marquiss: They all have the story to go with it.
23:32
Jay Marquiss: That's so great.
23:33
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, yeah.
23:34
Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that.
23:34
Crista Cowan: Well, while you were serving down at the Mormon Battalion site in San Diego, I had the opportunity to come visit you.
23:41
Crista Cowan: I think Lisa and Jen and I were down there for an Ancestry work thing, yeah, and we came and spent a little bit of time there, and one of the things that people may not know about that particular site, like many of the historical sites for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is you're dressed in costume, yes, and period costume of the time, and I remember you were out back helping some little kid pan for gold In my costume, in your costume, yeah, and now that I know you're from Alaska, it just seems so fitting that that was the environment that you were able to serve it really was.
24:21
Jay Marquiss: It was a little.
24:21
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, it was kind of fitting.
24:23
Jay Marquiss: It really was him wearing a watch that was gold nuggets that he had acquired while he was in Alaska, and I just would kind of laugh because there I am panning for fake gold at the time, and when Dad passed away, I inherited his watch, and so this is his watch.
25:02
Crista Cowan: Made out of real Alaska gold.
25:03
Jay Marquiss: Made out of real Alaska gold nuggets.
25:06
Jay Marquiss: That's amazing, that he had made and I kind of wear it in memory of him and he, after he joined the church, he just dedicated his life to the Lord and mother and dad served two missions and he wore it every day of his mission and I inherited it but I didn't feel like I should wear it.
25:30
Jay Marquiss: I just I don't know.
25:32
Jay Marquiss: But when I went on the mission I thought I'm going to wear this to honor dad and so I wore it every day and I would often.
25:39
Jay Marquiss: Every day I would think of him because I'd be down there panning gold and I could see my watch and it just made me think of dad and his stories of Alaska.
25:50
Crista Cowan: Yeah, so real Alaska, gold real Alaska sourdough Real Alaska sourdough what, as you think about what Alaska means to you, even though you know you haven't lived there most of your life?
26:01
Jay Marquiss: Not now, yeah.
26:02
Crista Cowan: It's where your roots are and clearly connections.
26:05
Crista Cowan: Still, what does that mean?
26:05
Jay Marquiss: Well, and you think about where you grow up and how that influences the rest of your life really, and that's what it's done to me.
26:12
Jay Marquiss: So almost 28 years first, 28 years of my life.
26:16
Jay Marquiss: And in fact I stopped into the hardware store yesterday and a fellow asked if he could help me and I said, oh, I'm just looking at this, but then I need to go pick this up.
26:30
Jay Marquiss: And he said, are you from Pleasant Grove?
26:32
Jay Marquiss: And I said no, I've been here Pleasant Grove 35 years, but not originally.
26:36
Jay Marquiss: Where are you from Alaska?
26:37
Jay Marquiss: And he was from Chile and he said Alaska and he was just enamored.
26:40
Jay Marquiss: I saw a show and he started asking me questions about Alaska and so I was answering him questions about the weather and the long summer days and the short winter days and and things like that, and it actually made me just yesterday this is ironic made me stop and think about Alaska and what, how big of a part of me that is.
27:02
Jay Marquiss: That's how I grew up A harsh back then, a lot harsher environment.
27:08
Jay Marquiss: We didn't have homes that were as tight and warm and we would put things over the windows to keep the cold from coming in and scrape the insides of the glass.
27:20
Jay Marquiss: And you just learned to live with plugging in your cars at night, you know, because we didn't have a garage and so you you'd plug them in to keep them warm, keep from freezing, and that was just how I grew up.
27:34
Jay Marquiss: And because it was maybe a little harsher environment, I honestly think that you become a little tougher, because that's all you know.
27:42
Jay Marquiss: And uh, we would go out and literally shoot our, our food, uh, moose and caribou, and uh, yeah it, you just it was normal.
27:57
Jay Marquiss: Um, I remember on one occasion my dad and his best friend and I were up to get a moose, and we would do it by plane sometimes, and so we spotted a moose and I actually was getting airsick because some of the things that they would do when they're looking at moose, and so I kind of laid over in the back and was dozing off.
28:19
Jay Marquiss: And the next thing, I know, we were landing and it was a really hard landing and it was in snow and the plane was on skis and anyway, they hand us the guns, hand us the guns, and we jumped out and we shot this moose and and, uh, and then, after, of course, they shot it, reality hit and we were stuck.
28:38
Crista Cowan: Oh no.
28:38
Jay Marquiss: We, we were wing deep in snow, we couldn't get out, and so we spent the night up on this mountain, because it was the next day before anybody could get in to us and we had almost used up all the fuel trying to get unstuck and so we had to wait for somebody to bring fuel in.
28:56
Jay Marquiss: But that was just kind of part of life.
28:58
Jay Marquiss: You just spent the night up on the mountain in the snow in 60 blow weather and tell somebody could come bring some more fuel.
29:08
Crista Cowan: And that's in the 1960s.
29:09
Crista Cowan: Your old gold miner, like that was a whole different world back then, back then, yeah.
29:14
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, they had those harsh environments that they went through to go mine their gold and so it was a little taste of kind of what they experienced in being out in the wilderness.
29:23
Jay Marquiss: So it was such a different environment that we were raised in and parents trusted us and we could just take off and come home.
29:33
Jay Marquiss: When we came home and we would.
29:35
Jay Marquiss: When we were a little older, we got to take the snowmobiles and just go off into the wilderness and the mountains and if we broke down we were taught how to fix them and, if not, why you'd leave a machine and ride home with somebody else and get the parts you needed to go back and get it later and it's just kind of how we were raised and it's because of that.
29:58
Jay Marquiss: I think it's just made me who I am.
30:00
Jay Marquiss: I just I don't know my wife gets after me sometimes because I do a little construction and I have a tendency to hurt myself sometimes on construction sites because I don't know if I'm careless or just I don't know, and so something happens and I just drive myself to the ER or put a paper towel over it and wrap it with electrical tape or something and take care of it later.
30:29
Jay Marquiss: Keep going, just keep going, because that's what we were taught.
30:31
Jay Marquiss: We just were taught in that environment.
30:33
Jay Marquiss: You just keep going.
30:34
Jay Marquiss: And so it's kind of made me who I am in some ways, and Alaska will forever be in my soul.
30:42
Jay Marquiss: That's who I am.
30:43
Jay Marquiss: So people even nowadays I'll say I'm not a Utahn, I'm an Alaskan.
30:50
Crista Cowan: I feel like I could sit and listen to you tell Alaska stories all day.
30:54
Jay Marquiss: My wife has said you need to write a book, and I just shrug it off and laugh.
31:00
Jay Marquiss: I do have a lot of stories of Alaska, of things that happened that wouldn't have been able to take place any place else.
31:06
Jay Marquiss: But you always have a piece of Alaska with you Always have a piece of Alaska with me one way or another.
31:11
Jay Marquiss: When I die, the kids will probably throw a starter in my casket, I hope they do, but I hope the watch gets passed on to somebody else.
31:20
Jay Marquiss: Yeah, it will get passed on.
31:25
Crista Cowan: Yes, it will Well.
31:25
Jay Marquiss: Thank you Thank you so much for being here.
31:26
Jay Marquiss: Thank you for sharing your story, some of your stories.
31:28
Crista Cowan: Oh, I hope that was all right.
31:29
Crista Cowan: Yeah, sure, appreciate you.
31:30
Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.