Alaska Ho! (standard:adventure, 3353 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Sep 07 2007	Views/Reads: 3509/2346	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Back in the early days, Alaska was a land of opportunity and challenge, even though some places were bearly livable.

ALASKA  HO! 

Robert Drennan stepped off the wooden sidewalk and splashed through
ankle deep mud up to the flight of wooden steps.  He stomped up, 
spattering mud off his shoes and unlocked the padlock, chucked his 
boots into a garbage can near the door, and stepped into his living 
room. Clothing and boxes were scattered everywhere.  Ellen had already 
flown to her new job in Denver that morning, taking Trish with her.  
Poor Trish!  She had spent her first six months in Alaska suffering 
from Chicken Pox, Ringworm, Ear Mites, Intestinal Flu, Dengue Fever, 
Lice, Acne and Parasites -- to say nothing of those headaches.  She had 
lost half a year of school and behaved as if there were terrorists 
around every corner. 

Drennan found some matches and lit the kerosene stove.  Its flames
highlighted the burnt rug and curtains where the fire had gotten out of 
control a couple of weeks ago.  Among other things, it was the fire 
that sparked Ellen's decision to give up Alaska once and for all.  That 
and the bear.  Drennan carefully walked around the hole in the floor 
that the bear had carved out.  Either the stilts weren't high enough or 
that was the world's tallest bear.  The house stood on stilts to be 
certain that it cleared the muddy flood caused by the Midsummer Thaw. 
For Bob Drennan, the future certainly looked bleak.  He found a beer 
and the sofa, then sat back and thought it all out, looking for the 
answer. 

The offer of a  boost to management with a big pay increase to handle
air traffic control in Tanana, Alaska, came to Bob out of the blue - 
literally.  He spent two months coaxing and cajoling Ellen to leave 
their estate in Coral Gables to have an adventure in Tanana. 

"Ellen, they're paying triple what I earn here.  In a couple of years
we'll save enough to relax for the rest of our lives."  In the end, 
Ellen and Trish went with him. 

Trish -- who read up avidly in her fifth grade geography book about the
"New Frontier" -- went wild with delight at the prospect of living 
among the seals and the caribou, standing proud and alone on the silent 
tundra stretching from horizon to horizon in the Land of the Midnight 
Sun. 

Ellen haunted Saks and Jordan Marsh for clothing, but she was finally
driven to flea markets and second-hand stores in her search for wool 
scarves and sweaters, fur linings, insulated boots, stocking caps, 
leggings, mittens -- all in South Florida's ninety-degree summer heat. 

Bob was right: his new job as Manager of Support Services for Air
Traffic Control ... paid triple!  With more hidden fringe benefits than 
anyone had a right to expect.  Unfortunately, Bob's request for a 
"quickie peek" at Tanana was turned down.  (Tanana, Pop. 5,530, lies 
opposite the juncture of the Tanana and Yukon rivers, at Alaska's 
geographic center.  A week later, Bob, Ellen and Trish left Coral 
Gables for their new home. 

That wasn't how they arrived. 

The tickets were split up in Seattle, so Trish and Ellen ended up on one
plane, Bob on another, and that ton of excess luggage on a third!  But 
a spring storm forced Bob's plane to seek refuge in Edmonton, while 
Ellen and Trish sat out a night in the airport at Ketchikam.  Their 
luggage found refuge in the Anchorage airport lobby.  After the storm, 
when telephones were working again, Bob flew to Juneau, but his wife 
and daughter had missed that flight. Instead, they went to Anchorage to 
look after the luggage -- which by that time was on its way to 
Fairbanks under a different name.  In the end, the family was united in 
Galena and arrived in Tanana by river boat up the Yukon.  A week later, 
on Sunday, their luggage found them. 

"You're lucky," a friendly neighbor told them, "Usually, the steamer
doesn't start its run until May fifteenth.  Means we're gonna have an 
uncommonly hot summer." 

"That's okay," answered Drennan, "next time we'll take the bus." 

Silence, and a puzzled look.  Finally, the neighbor spoke: "There ain't


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