Looking for Alaska (64 page)

Elections in Alaska generate almost as many unusual political debates and promises as they would in a space colony. Politicians make many promises. In Alaska someone running for office might say, “If elected, I promise to try to get some of the government-owned land for the people.” Only 1 percent of Alaska's land is privately owned. “I promise to do something about the wolves.” Some Alaskans are concerned because an overpopulation of wolves has brought these mighty, brilliant predators into villages looking for easy meals, like dogs. Some worry will children be next? “I promise to fight for subsistence.” Subsistence, the hunting and gathering of food to survive, is one of the most hotly debated, controversial issues in Alaska.

In the eighties, while Wally Hickel was running for governor of Alaska as an independent, some politicians were for keeping marijuana legal, some were for making it illegal. Although marijuana lost and Wally Hickel won, many Alaskans put this bumper sticker on their vehicles advertising the election results: “Pot got more votes than Hickel.” It's true.

Honey bucket
is one of Alaska's sweet words for not so sweet. It was and still is the receptacle for no. 1 and no. 2 in hundreds of Alaskan villages. It could be a five-gallon plastic bucket with a custom-cut wood seat. If the person is too heavy for plastic, then the honey bucket could be metal.

When I arrived in Deering to hang out with these two teachers, Dean and Eric, I didn't even know what a honey bucket was. In Barrow they'd put in a sewer, burying their sewer lines deep and even heating them. I found out what these lines had replaced in the first couple hours I was in Deering, sitting in Dean's little house along the road that was Main Street, the only one people lived along. The houses were all little wood boxes. Dean's house was tiny, one small bedroom, a small living room–kitchen, one room that was shut off. Dean, Eric, and I sat around talking, hearing the villagers pass by on their four-wheelers on the way to the only store. Only one person seemed to have a car, a small pickup. The rest traveled on four-wheelers or snow machines.

Deering is blessed to be a recipient from a major campaign plank of the present two-term governor, Tony Knowles. When he first ran for governor, he courted Alaska's Native community. Often in Alaska, politicians get elected by tiny margins. Somebody in Knowles's campaign came up with this political promise, which was repeated over and over anywhere in the bush where the honey bucket was filled and emptied: if elected, Knowles promised to do his best to put the honey bucket in the museum.

What museum would display honey buckets? Would they be honey buckets that famous people had sat on, or the most unusually designed honey buckets curators could find, say one painted with peace signs from the sixties or one that had been clawed by a brown bear and survived to be used again?

That promise may not sound like much to you. But if you'd been emptying a honey bucket all your life, in the winter at thirty below and in the summer when the mosquitoes are swarming, getting rid of it might just be enough to get your vote. Tony Knowles
was
first elected by a small margin, with a big assist from Native Alaskans. Now that political promise has actually been kept in Deering and many other villages. In Deering there are no more honey buckets—instead there is the human-waste blaster. This technology hasn't been around long enough to have a name; it should be called the honey rocket. With every invention there are bugs, if that's the right word, to be worked out, or pushed or flushed out. In this case they are blasted out. Putting in a sewage disposal system in a place that has permafrost and sometimes gets to fifty below zero is no easy task. This new high-tech honey rocket was the first thing I noticed when I walked into Dean's house. It was all over the walls, so to speak. In fact, when the new high-tech honey bucket was first installed in uptown Deering, in a couple houses instead of sucking it all
out
of the house, it shot it all up
into
the house like a mini-geyser. A couple people told Dean and Eric the suction was so great they worried about their small children playing near it. What if one adventurous little girl had her hand down in the toilet when the blaster went off, when it was flushed?

Running up the walls and across the ceiling in Dean's house were water and sewer pipes. A powerful pump was attached to the front wall. These pipes were in full view, not in the walls or hidden in any way. The new technology was displayed for everyone to see. It did cut into your ability to hang pictures, but that's all right. If the pipes were black, it could look techno. What if a pipe burst? It's bad enough if that happens underneath the house, much less over the kitchen table.

It's a type of vacuum. The biggest problem adjusting to this marvelous new honey blaster was the blast itself. When someone flushed, it sounded like a small jet taking off. The loud vacuum pump kicks on, then the even louder water pump kicks on; there is a loud sucking noise. Do not try to talk while the honey rocket is going off. Then if you're like Dean and you don't like hauling water to keep your tank filled, which is also open and right in your living room, it runs dry and there is an incessant sucking sound as the pump searches the empty tank for water. Visualize having friends over for a card game or a candlelight dinner of fresh caribou and seal oil and salmonberries, and someone flushes. There it is, it goes off, everyone stops talking and waits until the honey rocket has done its very appreciated task. But it's a small price to pay. Waiting to talk or being awakened or missing a score made by Alaskan Scott Gomez in the NHL play-offs on ESPN is worth it compared to the relative silence of the old honey bucket.

Some light sleepers in Deering have passed new rules since the honey rocket came to town: “No flushing at night while I'm asleep or else!” One of Dean and Eric's best friends in Deering is pre-school teacher Millie, a Native woman born and raised in Deering. She had an idea, one of those bright and shining moments when civilization is advanced if only someone will listen. She has one of the gentlest voices I've ever heard. She said one day as we were laughing about the honey rocket, “If they can make a silencer for a gun, why can't they make one for this?” What political potential this idea has, and if the solution is worked out by the right engineer, it could be cheap.

MOUSE TRADING

Teachers that come to the Alaskan bush from hometowns in Florida or Idaho, like Dean and Eric, or other places Outside should have certain personality traits to maximize their experience. They should possess the wayward, flexible spirit of the explorer, the ability to be thrilled by the unknown, and the “I don't care what people think” attitude of the rebel.

In Dean and Eric's case, these attributes were evident early and often. Dean grew up the son of Texans who'd moved to the small Florida beach town of Indian Harbour Beach, just south of Cocoa Beach. His dad was an engineer who worked for Harris, a company that did work for nearby NASA. The engineers of Dean's dad's era wore the short-sleeve white shirts, blue slacks, and certain type and color necktie that we all know.

Dean was born in 1973. He remembers wanting to be a surfer. His parents gave him the impression that nice kids don't surf, nice kids have short haircuts. Dean grew his hair long but was in the gifted programs and got good grades. He didn't have to try hard to get good grades; he probably heard something once and remembered it. He got 1370 on his SATs but hung with the punk crowd, the out crowd.

Dean recalled that his Alaska dream began when he was in second grade. Their
Scholastic Reader
had a story about land selling in Alaska for $2.50 an acre. He and his friend decided right then they would move to Alaska. In fourth grade, this same friend called Dean and asked if he was ready to go, they could ride their bikes to Alaska. Dean wasn't prepared then, but one night in fifth grade he did decide to go. He packed his daypack, had $4 in change, and took off at 4
A.M
. before his parents were up. The only problem was, he didn't know which way to go or quite how far it was. He went south on Route A1A and in two hours realized he needed to turn around and head back for school, which started at 8
A.M
.

Around this time Dean decided he wanted to build a rope swing. For whatever reason, he didn't ask his parents, or if he did, they wouldn't get him what he wanted, the necessary ten-foot piece of nylon rope. He included this desire in his Christmas letter to his grandmothers in Texas; they both sent him a piece of rope. He made a swing, and he remembers that it took him high into the sky.

After graduating from high school, he followed his first major girlfriend, one he had loved from the moment he saw her in tenth grade but didn't date her until his senior year, to college at the University of Central Florida. That didn't last long, the girlfriend, but he lost his dreams for Alaska in the world of fraternity life, partying, and drinking, probably a bit too much. He'd gone to major in engineering, but dropped out for a semester and came back wanting to be a teacher.

One of his grandmothers bought him a college graduation present, but died before she could give it to him. It was another piece of nylon rope. He knew what she meant by it—she meant it as inspiration, to remind Dean to follow his dreams. Getting that short piece of rope sparked some of his dreams all over again, especially the one about going to Alaska. That rope's the reason he got this job teaching in Deering, and that rope has proved to him that sometimes your dreams can be even better when you actually live them in the daylight.

Eric grew up in Salmon, Idaho. Growing up in a place named Salmon gives you a step up in Alaska on some guy like Dean, who grew up rarely wearing more than shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Eric's family is an influential and conservative family around Salmon; he grew up on a part of the family ranch. Salmon's near Montana, about ninety miles north of Sun Valley, and has about three thousand people. Eric told me his family was strong and involved and included lawyers, judges, city council members. He said he decided that his role in the family was to take the place of his black-sheep uncle. His ideas for living involved perpetual fun and stretching mischief as far as he could. In a family that had short hair, he too grew his long. Eric's got that sparkle in his face, that little-boy charm, that makes people like him right off. Both Eric and Dean could be classified as chick magnets, although obviously that ability was not one they wanted to develop or they would never have moved to Deering, where all the women are taken. Even if they weren't, as a teacher you're off-limits. Dean said he didn't begin appealing to females until his sister, always the classy dresser, told him he needed to start tucking in his shirt.

When Eric was locked in his room and grounded, he climbed out the window. When his car keys were taken, he took his dirt bike and a flashlight. He and his friends, the Salmon class of 1988, showed a creative side. When they wanted a day off, they marched through town protesting to get Martin Luther King Day off at school. Eric said there wasn't an African-American for one hundred miles, but they succeeded. On a hill overlooking Salmon is a huge S, visible from town, with a number signifying the year. In 1985, a few of them snuck up there one night and changed S85 to SEX. There was a government teacher that Eric and a few buddies liked to torment; they spray-painted his pigs Day-Glo orange, green, and purple.

Eric shocked a lot of people when he entered the army. He served in Desert Storm, and then right out of the army, he went to Boise State. He majored in Party 101 through 110; first semester his GPA was 0.0; second semester it was 0.25. He liked his psychology course, probably learned about himself. He ended up graduating from the University of Idaho, the family's choice in higher education. Eric says that his rebellious days now help him to work with so many who are turned off by school, education. In college he met a guy whose dad and brother fished in seine boats in Prince William Sound out of Valdez. Eric became the skiff man. He'd sit out there, write songs, and think about what he was going to do with his life. Sitting there one day, Eric decided he would teach in Alaska. And that's how Eric's and Dean's paths crossed and they came to live across the street from each other in Deering.

There was a knock on the door—it was Reggie. Reggie follows Dean and Eric everywhere they go, which is simple to do in a place like Deering. It is impossible to hide, unless you take off on your snow machine looking for four or five thousand caribou, which we did, or go to the plateau above town and look for the musk ox herd, which we also did. Riding along with a caribou herd that numbered in the thousands across the snow-covered tundra was one of my most profound moments in Alaska. No matter how far we followed them there was never a fence, not for the hundreds of miles they roamed during their yearly migrations. To see the herd of musk ox with this year's crop of baby musk ox protected in the center of the herd when anyone comes around was more inspiring than I had thought possible. Their long, flowing hair and their stocky, powerful bodies moved so forcefully atop the tundra. They like being up on the ridges and hilltops where the winds, not only friend to the Eskimo but to them as well, blew the snow away to make it easier for them to feed on the tundra.

Reggie, a large and powerful young Eskimo, is in junior high school, but he has the build of a man. He remembers not only Eric's and Dean's birthdays but their parents' as well. He remembers when Eric's mother came to visit. Reggie wants to play the guitar and sing just like Johnny Cash. He comes over to their homes, often a couple times a day, to pick and grin. He never thinks twice about wanting to hang out with his teachers, any time of the day or night. Both Dean and Eric have big and caring hearts and never turn Reggie away; they give so much of themselves. When he saw my microphone and found out I was from Tennessee, he wanted me to record him singing Johnny Cash. I did. One night, Reggie's mom and grandmother invited Dean, Eric, and me over for dinner. Reggie's mom is the cook at school. Since the people of Deering, especially the kids, so seldom see a stranger, every time I walked down the one and only street that the houses are on, I had a parade of kids following me or calling out, “Hello, Peter Jenkins.”