Living Blue in the Red States

2. Hauling Water

2. Hauling Water Frank Soos For five years, I lived in the cedar-sided hip-roof cabin at the top of Old Wood Way. As Alaskan cabins go, it was pretty deluxe. It was maybe sixteen by thirty feet and had a big deck that faced south and almost a full second-story loft up the steep stairs. At the end of the cabin that was my kitchen, I had a small white table and three chairs. A full-spectrum light sat right on the table; it kept my spirits up on the darkest days. All the storage space was covered by red-checked curtains—lots of storage, enough for my food and cooking stuff and my tools and ski waxes, too. In the living area there were two big couches, one a little broken down, a coffee table made from an old wire spool, and hooks I’d screwed into the exposed rafters for my skis and bikes and extra wheels. Up in the loft I had my bed, my writing desk, and my fly-tying desk. Because it was a cabin, I hauled water, hauled it in six-gallon jugs from the spring in Fox every couple of weeks or so. And because it was a cabin, it had an outhouse, just down the hill. Enclosed on only three sides, its open side, too, faced south. Sitting in there, a person could look down on the hardtop road that ran below. Maybe in the winter, people driving along the hardtop could look up and see me, too, but I didn’t think they’d bother, and if they did I didn’t care. I thought my cabin contained everything a person could want. Except: up on the east side of Chena Ridge, the side that tapers down into Fairbanks near the university, a guy had built a four-story house complete with a Victorian turret running up one side, all that house, so they say, built just for his wife and him. Probably this was 39 40 | Frank Soos the first house to go up in Fairbanks that cost over half a million dollars. Now, given the escalating real estate market, it may very well bring a million and a half or two million. Just about anybody in town could tell you the story behind that house. How the guy started building it, and as it went up and up, his neighbor behind him sued because the house would block his view of the Alaska Range. So for over a year, the house sat unfinished, covered in blue tarps and plywood. And then the neighbor lost the suit. The house was finished, the view was blocked, and the two households have lived locked in a certain enmity ever since, I suppose. When I first came to Fairbanks almost twenty years ago, there were still old pickup trucks banging around with bumper stickers that proclaimed , “We don’t care how they do it in the Lower 48.” There was something stubborn and pig-headed in that slogan that I had to admire . It’s part of what brought me here. Alaska was a different place and it would require different ways of thinking. The pipeline changed all that. The old timers, the true Sourdoughs, will tell you everything was better before the pipeline came in. People took care of themselves and looked out for others, too. They learned how to be frugal and inventive. You’ll know the old Sourdoughs from their yards. A near neighbor on Old Wood had a yard full of vintage Land Rovers, another a yard full of old Rambler American station wagons, and each had his share of fifty-five-gallon barrels, chain and cable and pipe. The Land Rovers seemed the better choice, but who could know? You never know what you’ll need or when you’ll need it. Who can say what a person might need? Or want? Or ought to want? Jesus tells the Rich Young Ruler to sell all his belongings and give the money to the poor. Only then would he be a fit disciple. I used to like to pester a graduate student of mine, a former seminarian , over this very question. And he owned up to the issue as it was applied in seminary bull sessions.Was it ok to have a nice stereo when a boom box might do? Could a person rightfully have a big cd collection , a smallish collection, or would the...