Looking for Alaska

  The only auction I’ve ever been to that had a catalog and living things for sale was the University of Tennessee Annual Bull Sale. It is held twice a year near my farm. The bulls can’t answer any questions, although they are measured and tested. “Scrotal circumference,” which has a bearing on sperm production, is an important number. The higher the number, the more sperm. Also in the catalog are the bulls’ height at the shoulder, birth weight, and daily weight gain while on feed. In cattle, many traits are inherited. It is important to know how much weight per day a bull can gain in a few months; he passes this trait on to his offspring.

  I don’t think weight-gain tests would be good for these bachelors. First, they would be put into rooms, then fed all the beer and food they could eat while watching TV. How much weight would they gain per day? Who cares? They weren’t going to be slaughtered after this auction. No measurements were given by the bachelors. Interested bidders would have to get what they needed by looking them over on the auction block. From what I’d heard, some of the bachelors might become more visible as they were being auctioned.

  Some of the guys did provide telling answers to a series of the catalog questions.

  1. Name?

  2. Bachelor number?

  3. Address?

  4. Age?

  5. Birthplace?

  6. How long have you lived in Talkeetna (or Alaska)?

  7. Where did you live before you came to Talkeetna (or Alaska)?

  8. What do you do for a living?

  9. What do you like best about Alaska?

  10. What was your most exciting Alaskan adventure?

  11. What do you do for entertainment?

  12. What are you looking for in a woman?

  The president of the society, Robert, forty-eight, originally from Iceland, who is a guide, pilot, surveyor, and construction worker, answered “What do you do for entertainment?” with “I entertain myself.”

  I overheard two women in their twenties looking over the catalog while I was at the local grocery store getting a strong espresso. The shorter, redheaded one, whose clothes were too tight-fitting for winter, said, “Look here, that guy’s president of the bachelors and he’s standing there with some kind of big gun. He says he entertains himself, usually, but he’s auctioning himself off tomorrow night for charity. Nice, not very demanding guy. He can take care of himself, you can tell by the way he holds his gun. I think I may bid on him. He’s my kind of man, low maintenance.”

  Under the “What do you do for a living?” question the answers were classic Alaskan. Some of them were “own and produce building lumber,” “pilot, teacher, writer, musher, retired air force,” “refuse hauler,” “eighth-grade teacher,” “snowplow driver,” “chef,” “helicopter mechanic,” “just about everything,” “custom knife maker,” “welder, mechanic,” “commercial fisherman,” “owner, rafting company,” “bartender,” “bridgeman for Alaska Railroad,” “make pictures,” “whatever is needed,” “carpenter,” “fishing charters,” “as little as possible,” “I receive checks.”

  Several bachelors were in their late twenties and early thirties. This group appeared more clean-cut, with trimmed beards. Their answers were laced with clichés. Their answers to “What are you looking for in a woman?” sounded copied from any personal ad, except for one. A thirty-five-year-old bachelor originally from Georgia, who had a brown goatee, long hair, and bandanna, explained precisely what he was looking for in a woman: “Deaf, dumb, blind, owns her own liquor store.”

  The guys in their forties, mostly with long beards just getting a few gray hairs, were more original. Under the “Age?” question, John “Dancing Bear” Sally, the custom knife maker and artist, put down, “Old enough to know my limits, but young enough to overstep them (49 and holding).” Forty-five-year-old “Free Trapper Rick” was looking for someone with “a cute smile and honest—likes to cook moose a thousand ways.” A fellow nicknamed Grog, who rode into town from his remote cabin dressed in moose-skin clothes, wanted a woman who “wants to live remote for more than one night.” What Grog likes best about Alaska is “wide-open spaces and crazy people.”

  Gary, the mellow-eyed bachelor with the longest beard, wanted a woman “self-sufficient, determined, loving, caring, giving, and who cooks and cleans.” His answer to “What was your most exciting Alaskan experience?”: “Rescuing woman in need.” Forty-five-year-old Dave from California had one simple request for the woman he was looking for: “One that will go home on New Year’s.” That confused me. Did he want a woman that would go out with him on New Year’s Eve and then come home with him too?

  Gary Hermes, the director of the auction and bachelor No. 17, answered the question “What was your most exciting Alaskan experience?” by saying, “Rescuing women in need.” PHOTO BY PETER JENKINS

  The oldest bachelor, Clarence L. Wells, sixty-three, originally from Brentwood, California, answered “What are you looking for in a woman?” with “Who’s looking.” Carl, the forty-two-year-old owner of a rafting company who put just the word “Freedom” as the answer to the question “What do you like best about Alaska?” got more specific when answering “What was your most exciting Alaskan experience?” His answer: “Making love on a catwalk under a windy bridge five hundred feet up, on a ten-foot beam.” Carl may have hurt his chances to be bid upon when he answered “What are you looking for in a woman?” with “Someone who knows how to live, isn’t a bitch, scoops dog shit, and isn’t afraid to explore each other honestly, openly.”

  It was Friday night, the night before the men went for sale, a lovely night for bingo. I found the Veterans of Foreign Wars building, VFW Post 3836. Many cars were parked out front on this crisp night. Stars vibrated in the black, clear sky, unpolluted to infinity, and the glowing lights inside the frosted windows attracted me. To get here, I had turned left by a pair of caribou horns wrapped in tiny, blinking Christmas lights nailed to the outside of a building. My waitress said that if I went by a stuffed Dall sheep, entwined in lights, standing on a float, I’d gone too far. The snow squeaked loudly under the rubber soles of my insulated boots.

  The VFW hall was a log building, and the central entry hallway had all the bachelors’ bios and color pictures displayed on the walls. To the right was a bar and on the left a large room filled with tables and the bingo players. I sat down in perhaps the only open seat. The room was filled with a real cross section of people: a couple long-bearded guys, a man with a Santa Claus hat, some folks in their seventies, a couple in horn-rimmed glasses, a couple that had not yet given up on finding nirvana.

  I sat across from a talkative, small, black-haired woman who immediately sensed I knew nothing about bingo. She introduced herself, said her name was Gina. She appeared to be sizing up the competition.

  “When was the last time you played?” She stared at me aggressively. Alaskans seem to have a habit of looking you in the eye.

  “Never have,” I answered with a half smile. I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

  “Well, here, you need to buy some cards and do exactly as I tell you. Never fails, first-time players win. Understand?”

  She seemed used to getting her way. There were eight tables of twelve, ninety-six people, plus the caller and some groupies. Almost one-third the town was here for bingo? Wow.

  Gina pointed to the pile of prizes: a reindeer that lit up, smoked salmon fillets, a ham. A large, stuffed caribou head looked down at us all from the wall. Gina was serious in instructing me on how to play the game. She said I should play four cards at a time. Some Anchorage women here had once played nine cards, she exclaimed.

  “Some of those Anchorage people, all they do is play bingo,” Gina spat out disdainfully.

  As the game began, and the man called out the numbers, the atmosphere changed radically. Number 75. Number 51. Number 49. On and on it went. So many numbers, so little time.

  “Bingo is not for the weak of heart,” Gina said, raising her voice, trash-talking.

  Another
lady across from me who was playing six cards mentioned that she was amazed I was playing four cards for my first time. I began to feel the pressure of missing a number, so many numbers, called out so quickly, and so few prizes. A couple games came and went and no one at our table won. Gina mentioned that she didn’t care if she won one game because the prize was an electric blanket and she doesn’t have electricity in her cabin.

  After another game of no one winning at our table Gina asked me if I noticed the vibe changing in this crowded room, the most happening spot for miles in all frigid directions.

  “Just feel it rising. That is bingo anger.”

  Someone Gina knew won at the table next to ours. The passions inside this room were becoming noticeably more intense.

  “Dammit!” Gina punched the word out from inside her little, usually self-controlled body. “Sorry, you don’t say dammit when someone else wins, dammit.”

  Then with no warning, two of Gina’s cards were filling up. The right numbers were called and colored in. She was about to win. Her porcelain-white skin was flushed, a glowing pink color. Her eyes almost seemed to roll back in her head. I thought the thought but can’t bring myself to complete it, she seemed almost … no, no. My mind left the bingo hall for a second; haven’t some people reached great heights of ecstasy at Beatles, Luther Vandross, and Elvis concerts? Well? But not here, certainly not.

  Gina’s joyous squeal brought me back to the moment as she gushed, “I love this game.” She was now fanning herself. “I don’t know what happens to me when I am winning. What makes it even more exciting is that I have to go to the bathroom and I can’t leave. I might get my number …

  “Oh, my god.”

  Only she and a guy named Jason were still in the running for this win.

  The caller alerted us all, “Now hold on, I’m running out of balls.”

  The white-haired ladies at the corner table giggled. I didn’t get it at first; I was so hoping that Gina would get what she needed. One more number was called out, one more big chance for Gina. Her face was now turning red, and she was fanning herself faster and faster and faster. But then the wrong number was called out, Gina lost, and long-haired, tattooed Jason won.

  “I hate bingo!” she blurted out.

  Jason, the guy with the flowing beard and suspenders who Gina said directs traffic at the Moose Dropping Festival, won the big, fat ham. He had a huge and colorful tattoo on his arm visible to all as he strutted slowly and victoriously up to grab his prize. After it’s all over and Gina’s breathing had calmed, she told me that she thought I was a natural bingo player. That is until she grabbed my mostly colored-in cards and found three different numbers I had missed marking.

  “What happened to you, bingo boy? I should have watched you closer, I told you beginners have good luck.” She began to fan herself again. People were gathering up their cards, putting on their coats.

  Abruptly, Gina walked away into the frozen night, headed back to her little cabin with no electricity in the moonlit woods. The snow was now falling in even bigger, fatter flakes.

  After the surprising thrills of bingo, but feeling unfulfilled because I lost, I had to do something. So I went over to the Fairview Inn. A sled dog team was parked outside, along with several snow machines and a couple pickups. The local newspaper, The Talkeetna Good Times, free to all, was in a small, just-read pile on a free table. I smoothed it out, put it back together, and read it. I love small-town newspapers. This one appeared to be a monthly. You can tell so much about a place by the ads. In this week’s were many ads, hoping to get the attention of the people in town for the Bachelors Auction and Wilderness Woman Contest. One said, “McKinley Snowmobile Adventures. Remote lodge with Alaskan atmosphere.… Access by snow machine, dog sled, snowshoe, or cross-country ski.”

  Out of all fifty states, Alaska must have the highest percentage of population that does not own cars. Many Alaskans travel by four-wheeler, in all kinds of boats, in bush planes, on snow machines, by foot, by ferry. Though oddly, taxis are a big deal, even in some of the smallest Eskimo villages. The local taxi ad said, “Talkeetna Taxi & Tours, Inc. Weekly Wasilla shopping [Wasilla’s the closest place with a big grocery store, north of Anchorage]. Every Friday throughout winter. $25 per person. Minimum 4, maximum 10. 733-TAXI.”

  For any winter tourists there was “Talkeetna Air Taxi * McKinley Scenic Flights * Land on a glacier * Visit McKinley base camp * Since 1947.” And for those who “Can’t bear to be inside. Cross-country ski rentals. Skis, boots, poles, $15/day. Carhartts. Insulated bibs. Mountain hardware. Thick fleece jackets and pants.”

  For those Christmas shopping, there was this ad: “What your Santa wants for Christmas! A Stihl 018c chain saw. $199.95. At Talkeetna Arctic Cat.” Under John “Dancing Bear” Sally’s ad for his custom knives, antler carving, and scrimshaw was this one: “THE MOSQUITO NET. Sign up before the year 2000 and get 2 MONTHS FREE. Internet Access Service 357-8967.”

  Underneath the newspaper was an invitation on hot-pink paper. It said, “The Talkeetna Bachelors Society cordially invites ALL SINGLE LADIES (and other interested parties) to the Fourteenth Annual WILDERNESS WOMAN CONTEST. The Wilderness Woman Contest was added in 1986 to select the lady who best exemplified the traits most desired by a Wilderness Man. Single ladies demonstrate their proficiency at fire stoking, water fetching, snow machining, fish catching, moose dispatching, ptarmigan hunting, sandwich making, beverage opening, and other vital skills for daily living on the Last Frontier.… Saturday, December 4, 1999, in the Village Park, Talkeetna, Alaska.”

  December 4 dawned a mild twenty-two degrees and windy. The Olympian contests soon to begin would pit some of the world’s most beautiful and least politically correct women against each other. The winner would get a gold nugget and a handcrafted fur hat. First came the “fifty-yard dash to a simulated creek to fill water buckets, in full winter gear, returning with them full.” Each pail filled with cold, sloshing water weighed thirty to forty pounds. Many, many people in Alaska still haul their water from holes chopped in the ice of the neighboring lake or creek or river. This contest would weed the women down to five or six, based on their times. Event number one had the wilderness women panting and straining. There was no goofing around; these events were all about the serious, difficult, and essential skills required to survive in the Last Frontier.

  Then came the wilderness woman obstacle course, a combining of normal winter duties. This included “driving a snow machine around a short course.” The hustling wilderness women in this event, either real ones who lived the life or wanna-bes, would “gather firewood and deposit it on a fire,” all on snowshoes. They would catch a simulated fish, then use a pellet gun to shoot a simulated ptarmigan, which were balloons on a piece of painted plywood. A twenty-something dirty blonde from San Francisco who had never shot a gun or driven a snow machine was doing amazingly well; she was athletic and had a sense of humor. It took her more than fifteen tries to hit the required balloons. “What would my friends think if they could see me now?” she was overheard saying.

  Then the ladies would climb a tree to escape a simulated enraged moose, after which she had to dispatch the angry moose with a simulated rifle, a cutout piece of wood. Real Alaska women shoot 375s, 300 magnums, 30/06s. One of the bachelors, a guy born in New York City, now a local eighth-grade teacher, played the enraged and then dying moose, falling into the snow every time he was shot by a wilderness woman. After the charismatic, short-haired, very feminine contestant from San Francisco “shot and killed” the male in the moose suit, she leapt on top of him and kissed him right on his big moose lips. I heard a few locals say the bachelor in the moose suit should bring a high price at the auction because he was “cute.” Hearing the word cute in Alaska had the same impact on me as smelling rotted roadkill.

  The best event for the young woman from San Francisco was the one in which she had to run across Main Street, make a sandwich, and grab a beer at a table laden with fixings, then sprint back t
o the deserving bachelor. The happily reclining man watched Sunday-afternoon football on a simulated TV. Points were not given for neatness, so most bachelors wore the largest black garbage bags they could find over their bodies to keep them from drowning in beer and being gagged by the sandwiches accidentally smashed into their faces.

  This year a tall, stunning young woman, Hillary Schaefer from Ester, a hip, kind-of-artist community near Fairbanks, won for the third time. The woman from San Francisco came in fourth.

  MALE ORDER CATALOG

  When I walked into the VFW hall, people were everywhere, cleaned up and smelling of more cologne and perfume than I had experienced in months. The hall was filled with attractive women from their midtwenties to their fifties. A few had on sequined evening dresses, their hair teased and makeup applied artfully. There were three tall blondes, fashionably outdoorsy looking. None had been natural blondes since they were about six. They had on short, black, tight dresses; black stockings; they could have been at some art gallery opening in L.A. All kinds of ladies were here, some in jeans, some in custom-made fur coats made of mink, beaver, marten.

  A woman with thick, wavy brown hair wondered aloud as she gazed at one of the bachelor bios and pictures on the wall, “Can we use our credit cards on some of these guys?”

  One of the tall, outdoorsy-looking women in the black dresses answered, “Girl, you should hope so, because I brought a pile of cash and that one you’re looking at is mine!”

  It was body to body in the hall. I was one of the only men around; the bachelors were hidden somewhere, which aided in building great anticipation. One woman pressed herself against me. She seemed aroused by the feeding frenzy that was building fast in here.