sonora2sonoma

Nome in 1981 had the feel of a frontier town, or, more accurately, like I imagined a frontier town might feel, since I had no prior experience with which to make such comparisons. It served as the commercial hub for the many small, mostly indigenous communities scattered about Norton Peninsula. There was money, there was opportunity and there was wildness. Living in such a harsh climate amounted to an uneasy compromise with physical conditions those from milder climes, like me, might easily regard as unimaginably perilous.

It was illegal not to pick up hitch-hikers there, because the person you failed to pick up might end up freezing to death. Among the native population “walking down the road” was considered an acceptable means of suicide. I witnessed the ocean freeze over during my stay.

Alcohol was the scourge of the Eskimo population in Nome just as it is for Native American populations in the ‘lower 48.’  Many of the outlying villages had recently voted to become “dry.” Nome, on the other hand,  had more bars than churches, and functioned as a magnet, drawing villagers to town to drown their sorrows in the drink they were denied at home.

Alcohol sales were, as a result, a lucrative enterprise. The man who owned the town’s most popular bar was also its biggest landlord. Drinking establishments remained open until 4:00 am on weekdays and never closed at all on the weekends. In that regard, it had the wide-open feel of Reno, Nevada in the 50s.

The churches competed with the bars for the souls of the wayward much as they did in the Wild West a century earlier. From what I could gather, the bars had the upper hand. Between the climate, the relative lack of  recreational opportunities and the short photoperiod of a latitude lying less than a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, alcohol consumption was a big part of the town’s social life.

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I had journeyed to Nome not only to escape the depressing state of affairs my life had become back home, but also to aid Dave in the construction of a room addition he had been hired to build for friends. It was agreed the job would proceed on a time and material basis. Owing to the bitter cold and the potential for frostbite, coming inside to thaw out periodically by the wood stove was considered part of the job, or “on the clock.” 

One of the many interesting things I learned while there was that it can actually be too cold to snow. Another was the relative absence, because of the frigid temperatures, of such common maladies as the flu and the common cold.  On the other hand, and perhaps to balance things out, an affliction not uncommon among the native population was a type of bacterial infection spread by cuts accidentally incurred while carving up seal blubber.

When we weren’t busy working on the construction job, Dave took me off on little junkets to show me some of the sights that could be reached via air. In fact, most of the places up there required an airplane to access, since none of the handful of roads that emanated outward from Nome went further than 60 or so miles before coming to an abrupt end.

The absence of roads connecting the area to the outside world meant the only means of getting there were by air   or sea and, in winter-time, by air alone. This isolation  provided some degree of insulation from the outside world. Certain stylistic artifacts from the world beyond took longer to take hold as a result, probably due to the efforts of businesses seeking markets to unload outdated goods. For example, the type of cat’s eye glasses the cartoonist Gary Larson was fond of placing on his cartoon women—a style that went out of vogue, thankfully, a decade or two earlier in the lower 48—were ubiquitous among the Eskimo women while I was there. The hula-hoop was also enjoying a late resurgence.

Tim Konrad

(To be continued)