Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [102]
“You know what?” I say to Aroun, because a fabulous idea has just flashed into my mind and I can't keep it to myself. “I've thought of a slogan for your town.”
“You have? What is it?”
“Barrow, Alaska—we put the ‘ice’ in isolated.”
Isn't that great? They should have leaflets made.
Aroun doesn't appear to be as impressed with the idea as I am, though he smiles graciously anyway, bless him. Meanwhile I, at his side, am helpless—“My God, it's a winner! It's a winner!”—unraveling in giggles.
Seated behind me in the truck, Fat Kid,3 Eric, and Chuck are helpless too, suppressing roars of laughter by stuffing fingers in their mouths to prevent them registering on the microphone.
“Sorry,” Fat Kid says afterwards, which of course registers on the microphone. Then he bursts into laughter again, and so does that.
I must say, removed from his normal office environment he's an entirely different animal: lively, relaxed, pleasant, slightly juvenile, but heaps of fun with it. Gone is the loud, laddish masculinity of the superhero-with-something-to-prove persona he puts on in L.A., replaced here by a mellower clarkkentish side I've not seen before, making him altogether more approachable, both charming and disarming. Indeed, if I were a cynical man, which I'm not, but if I were, which I stress again I am not, but if I were,4 then I might even wonder what could possibly have prompted such a sudden about-turn, and what he's really up to.
Hm.
At one point, he confides that there's a bottle of booze in the truck. We're going to use it to toast our success at the end of shooting what might be a grueling episode. Sounds great. At least to begin with. But really it's not the brightest of ideas.
As if a contemptible climate and months of perpetual darkness, all the way through from nippivik tatqiq to siqinyasaq tatqiq, don't make life tough enough already, the sale of booze is outlawed. Barrow is not “dry” exactly, more “damp.” If you want alcohol, you have to import it yourself, and even then you'll probably need a permit.
There's a good reason for this. Not surprisingly, it dates back to one of the oddest eras ever, Historical Times.
In 1826, two explorers, Tom Elson and Bill Smythe, sailed across the Atlantic from Britain, thinking they'd drop in on Alaska, see what was going down; maybe even map out a bit of the coastline if there was time.
When they arrived, they discovered a primitive settlement populated by the ancestors of today's Inupiat Eskimos, nomadic hunters from Siberia who'd lived here for four thousand years or more. Back then, the town was called Utquiagvik, an old Eskimo word meaning “out-of-the-way frozen hellhole.” But since convention demanded that every place name be immediately changed by European explorers to something they liked better, and face it, nobody could pronounce Utquiagvik anyway, the settlement was quickly rechristened—though not in honor of the men who discovered it, as much as they may have wanted that (“How about Cape Elsmythe? Or even Smyleport? I LOVE Smyleport.”), but after some aristocrat back home who'd funded their expedition: Sir John Barrow.
Within a few years, the people of Smyleport, as it was known right up until the “Welcome to Barrow” signs arrived from the supplier, were overrun with European merchants. They sailed in, bombed and harpooned whales, killed caribou for food and for the hides, and blithely shot wolves, polar bears, and arctic foxes for fur, then sailed away again to become very rich on the proceeds. Though it has to be said, this arrangement wasn't all one-sided. In the name of fairness, the Europeans