Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The Bamboo Room looks different these days. Christy Tengs Fowler has been using her extra time to clear out and organize decades worth of photos, correspondence, newspaper and magazine articles and other items saved by her family since closing her restaurant in March. Many of the materials were stored in her parents attic before it found a home in hers, she said. "When I cleared out my mom's house, we sold everything at the garage sale. Anything that looked like letters I put in my attic and cubby holes which have been just stuffed where I couldn't even walk into them," Tengs Fowler said. "I finally have the time and space to go through it all. The bar was totally full and we already went through it." Among the myriad items and stacks, organized into sections with sticky notes, was a poem from John Schnabel titled "Good ol Boy," Time Magazines that covered Bill Clinton's impeachment, Princess Diana's death, the Challenger explosion and Barrack Obama's election, and old legal documents detailing the history of the Pioneer Bar. Stacks of old photos, local news clippings and her mother's divorce papers are also spread out on Bamboo Room dining tables. "I'm going to, at least for now, sort it all and get it in safe containers and put it back into the cubby holes, but it will be quarter of what it was before."