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Six Thousand Colored Neckties, 700 Sport Coats and
a Cabin in Goldstream Valley
By Tom Delaune
Approaching Jim Anderson’s cramped office in the
University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Biosciences Library, I can
see him leaning over his desk, mouthing the words as he reads from
a textbook.
I knock, and he looks up. From b ehind
a pair of light glasses, the 62-year-old librarian’s thoughtful eyes
take me in. We shake hands and he directs me to a chair. He has to remove
a hiking pack from it, and the musty smell of camping wafts lightly as he
sets it down on the floor.
The office is packed. Three filing cabinets, three desks
and countless books line walls that feature numerous paintings of tableaus.
More paintings are stacked against the wall behind my chair.
I’m here because I’ve heard that Anderson is a collector. He
is, I would soon find out, much more than that.
This articulate, methodical man grew up on a farm in
Kennewick, Wash. He attended the University of Washington as an undergraduate
and earned a doctorate from Michigan State University. He arrived in Alaska
in 1970 and moved to Goldstream Valley in 1974. Anderson has been there
ever since. “It’s heaven out there,” he says.
Though he works as a librarian—he received a master’s from Brigham
Young University in Library Science—Anderson does extensive research
in aerobiology, or the study of pollen grain and spore samples, in the Fairbanks
and Anchorage areas. He has a Ph.D. in palynology, the study of fossilized
pollen grains and spores.
Anderson lives alone in a large cabin with his two devocalized
Samoyeds, seven storage units, 25 big black typewriters, 100 pairs of pants,
150 shirts, roughly 300 works of what he calls “junk store art,” 700
sport coats, 6,000 colored neckties and more than 12,000 books.
To say he’s a collector is an understatement. He’s not sure
where he picked up the desire to collect, but thinks it started with books. “It’s
just an inherent urge, I guess,” he shrugs.
He pauses and opens his light blue sport coat, looking
down at the inside pocket. Seven metal pens line the pocket, which is marked
No. 126, Aug. 4, 1982.
Anderson explains that he picked the jacket up on a
trip through Canada. “Four dollars, Canadian,” he grins.
On another occasion, he sports a plaid, yellowish coat.
A look inside the pocket reveals that it is No. 143. He acquired the jacket
in 1983.
The clothes
Anderson likes to dress sharp.
As he puts it: “Not only are two-thirds of everybody fat now, they
just wear sloppy clothes,” he says. Waging his own personal war against
fashion trends dominated by blue jeans and sweatshirts, Anderson dons colorful
dress shirts, neckties, vests, pants and sport coats.
He enjoys the distinction in his clothing but bases
it upon his desire to stand out in a world where everyone else dresses the
same. “If everybody wore a shirt like this every day and a coat like
this every day,” he smiles, “I’d probably revert to sweatshirts
and blue jeans.”
With a collection of some 6,000 colorful neckties, Anderson
one day hopes to create a “Necktorium,” or a museum of neckties.
He envisions a separate building for the ties, or perhaps a display room
in his house.
The books
Anderson describes his book craze as bibliomania. “Long before I actually
moved into the profession, I began collecting books,” he says. And
while he hasn’t read all of them, he hopes to display them someday. “At
least they would look good on the shelves,” he says.
He stores his 12,000-book collection in numbered boxes,
which he once recorded in a card-catalog system—a system that soon
proved too time-intensive to continue as his library expanded. He stores
more than 100 boxes of books in an 8by-12 building, dubbed the Book Barn.
“It would be quite a job to recover a particular book,” he cautions,
noting that the boxes are lined in deep shelving units. And while the Book Barn
contains literally thousands of texts, it filled to its limit long ago.
Unable to quell his addiction for the written word,
Anderson has created three different caches of books in the woods near his
home. The boxes are stacked on a wooden platform and covered with several
layers of thick, black plastic sheeting. The black plastic, he theorizes,
will help camouflage the stashes from possible vandals’ eyes.
He has also filled his lower porch with boxes.
The Junk Store Art Collection
A large part of Anderson’s quarry is what his calls his “Junk
Store Art Collection.” Visits to thrift stores across Southcentral
Alaska over the past few decades have revealed more than a few gems in terms
of amateur paintings, prints and other works of art.
“If you go fairly often, you can skim of the cream of the crop,” Anderson
advises. “And the prices aren’t half bad.” But he’s not
too keen on others getting wind of his trade secrets. “It would sort of
usurp my hobby,” he explains. “People would be getting most of the
good stuff.”
In addition to displaying the artwork in his home, Anderson
has displayed his paintings throughout the entire BioSciences Library on
UAF’s West Ridge. Every wall at the end of every aisle bears at least
one painting or another. He has collected more than 300 works of art from
the second-hand shops.
“It’s just amazing the stuff people will turn over to these thrift
stores,” he says.
The dogs
On Anderson’s right jacket lapel is a pin of a large, white dog. Between
his passion for the outdoors and his collections, Anderson raises white
Samoyeds. It’s obvious he loves the breed; pictures of the dogs are
on his computer monitor, windowsill and filing cabinet. A large, stuffed
toy Samoyed greets visitors just outside Anderson’s office door. “They’re
the prototypical Arctic breed,” he says.
He notes that he has only owned four dogs at a time,
and presently owns just two males: Arkko and Archie.
Anderson was heavily involved in showing the dogs in
the 1980s (all of his Samoyeds are American Kennel Club champions), but
like his collections, the process of showing and breeding proved too time-consuming
for Anderson. Still, he runs often with Arrko and Archie, hooking each up
to an old car tire for drag. And the pair have a wide, fenced-in deck to
live in when Anderson is not home.
“The dogs have for a run more than I have for a house,” Anderson
says.
In all
Anderson also has a collection of BOBTs, or big, old
black typewriters, as he calls them. The unwieldy mechanic writing tools
intrigued him in his college days, and, noting their increasing rarity,
he began to collect them. For a while he was using them to type up his cards
and logs for organizing his collections.
But that process has waned over the last few years.
“My professional life is so full, the collecting has tapered off,” he
says.
But he continues to mention various collections during
the conversation. Anderson, who bears an affinity for the harmony of organ
music in “wide reverberant spaces,” has an extensive collection
of classical and organ music on vinyl and CD.
“I’ve had a lifelong passion for music,” he says, “especially
the organ.” Anderson also notes that he has a hefty collection of photo
slides, dating back to his mountaineering days in the mid-1950s.
He lives alone with his dogs. On his quiet, western
Goldstream plot, Anderson’s seven storage units make up a large part
of his life. He built the storage buildings himself, so, he says, they are
pretty tight in terms of craftsmanship.
“I enjoy that kind of work, but it’s just too time-consuming,” he
points out.
Anderson says that while fire is always a risk, he takes
solace in the fact that even if his house burns to the ground, his collections
will remain intact.
The fear of vandalism racks Anderson’s nerves more than anything else. “I
live in constant fear of some idiot running across the property on a snow
machine,” he says.
Of all his possessions, it’s hard for Anderson to come up with a favorite.
But, he notes, as he stands up to think, there could be one. He describes
a painting that hangs in his home. It’s a large woodland scene. Thick
shafts of sunlight pour through the branches, cutting into the darkness.
It’s bound in an elaborate golden frame. Anderson found it about 15
years ago in Fairbanks. The price? About $12.“That is really a magnificent
painting,” he says.
“It’s quite possible that I’ll never do anything with these
collections,” he muses. “The people who have to dispose of my estate
are going to have quite a time.”
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