When I was two years old, my mother and father took me to Alaska. We put a canoe on top of the car, and I sat in the back with Digit, our German shepherd. We staked ten acres of land north of Talkeetna on a hill overlooking the Alaska Railway and the Susitna River, and beyond that a view of Mount McKinley.

We cleared the land and built a cabin, while we lived in a double-walled army tent. I helped my father cut the trees, peel the logs and do all the work. Then after we moved into the cabin, he gave me a small guitar, about the size of a ukulele but with six strings, and I began playing it right away.

My father, of course, is Peter Stanley. I have played and sung with him all my life. He’s always been my musical hero, and most of the music I know I learned from him. When I was in high school, I began to play with him and Judith Lang at Tilly’s restaurant.

Since then I’ve been playing on my own and in a band with Tommy Hughes, John McNiel and Stuart Grimes. We are fortunate to be in demand, and I love it because I’m most at peace with myself when I’m singing for other people.

Love for the Land is a song I wrote about Alfred Jackson. His brother Henry worked for my grandmother, and when Henry died, Alfred Jackson just showed up and starting working. He never asked permission to start working, and he didn’t ask for any money. He just started working.

Alfred Jackson was an excellent farm hand, and he could—and often did—make my brothers and me look totally stupid. I remember the time when George, Jimmy and I were trying to get a 1,200 lb. log onto a trailer. We thought we were so smart, with all of our education, and we worked for 45 minutes to get the log up on the trailer. Nothing we did worked, then Alfred came wandering by, looped a chain under the log and over the trailer, hopped on the tractor and he had the log on the trailer in less than a minute. He used to do that type of thing all the time.

But it’s his outlook on life that intrigued me and which caused me to write this song. He has a shack on the outskirts of the property, and he can be found sitting out on his front porch with a chew in and a totally settled look on his face. In a world obsessed with millions, he’s got it all figured out. He doesn’t care, and it seems like his quality of life is higher than anybody’s.

Alfred Jackson is now 85 years old. He likes the song, and he says “That boy knows me better than I do.”

Christopher Stanley

Christopher and Peter Stanley