ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

It snowed overnight in Haines.

Following a week of cold that saw the thermometer digits drop into the low 20s, the temperatures warmed and the sky opened up with a wet snow perfect for snowballs.

All night Friday the flakes fell heavily, thumping to the ground. At 5 a.m., outside the window of my dungeony ground level apartment (No 18. Two German Shepherds keep a wary eye on me from the balcony overhead) I heard the beep-beep-beep of the plows running in reverse.

At dawn it was clear what had taken place.

Under the newly fallen snow was a sheet of ice that made the footing treacherous.

I walked over to a nearby community hall for a story on local artisans selling chili and tamales and nature photography to help a local charity.

It was the annual bazaar and Haines came out support it.

One woman sold the northernmost homemade tamales on the planet. One man made the same chili he whipped up in Chicago 25 years ago to help raise money there. And a local park ranger turned photographer talked about the magic of capturing Alaskan wildlife on film.

I almost fell three times on the short walk to the hall. Later, I did a story about four locals who crashed their vehicles on a slippery hill until a snow plow pulled them all out.

The driver refused to take any pay for his services, saying he too would one day be stuck someplace and hoped locals would repay the favor rather than just driving past and flipping him the bird.

After dark, I met Joe on the street. He’s the eccentric local character who has dressed up in a bear costume and once had a good shot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Joe dressed as a bear, found an unused star and posed with the word BEAR stenciled before him.

Joe asked me if I had enough winter clothes and then gave me some advice on walking on ice.

Clench your buttocks, small steps.

Then we met a local woman who’d I’d quoted in a story that week.

I asked her if I’d misquoted her.

She said no. I’d done fine.

But she said she wanted to change the pronunciation of her first name. Some other woman in town, a Deborah, was suddenly DeBORah. That got her to thinking.

Later I took a walk in the dark, walking gingerly over the ice, occasionally clenching my buttocks as Joe had instructed.

I stopped in to chat with a local artist.

We sat at his kitchen, drinking beers, and he talked about his journey after losing his wife to cancer two years ago.

He started to refurbish their old house as a way of moving on. And then , on a lark, drove back to the places in Chicago where they’d first met, first kissed, listened to Neil Young’s Heart of Gold on a bar jukebox.

The bar was there. So was the jukebox. So was the song.

He played it twice and cried.

We toasted to love.

He was the father of the woman I’d encountered in the street earlier that night, the one I’d quoted correctly.

Haines is a small town.