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Saturday, September 20, 2008
In My Alaska, an Eager River Runs Through It
By Hailey Heinz
Of the Journal
Being from Alaska has always been among the most interesting things about me. It makes for a good icebreaker at parties, as long as I'm braced for the barrage of questions.
“So, do you live in an igloo?”
“Is it really dark all the time?”
“Do you have the Internet?”
“Is it cold there?”
That last one, believe it or not, is probably the most common. And for those of you keeping track at home, yes. Yes it is.
But in the past few weeks, being from Alaska — specifically Wasilla, Alaska — has made me even more of a curiosity than I was before.
A manic fascination with Sarah Palin has swept the nation since John McCain named her as his running mate. And with that has come a fascination with the state she governs and the town where she was mayor.
It's also the town where I was born. Actually, I was born in nearby Palmer because Wasilla didn't have a hospital back then. I went to school there until I was 7, and my dad still lives there. Based on these qualifications, countless people in the past few weeks have asked me what I can tell them — as a relative insider — about Sarah Palin.
The answer is not much.
I've met her, but I don't know her. I can't tell you what she's like to have a beer with or whether she's different when her guard is down. I definitely can't tell you what that accent is all about. We don't have an Alaskan accent. That Canada/Minnesota/Fargo lilt to her voice is all Sarah.
But I can tell you a little about Wasilla.
It's a funny thing to watch the national media descend on your hometown. Friends and relatives back home tell me you can't drive down the road without seeing it lined with huge cameras and live broadcast units.
Reporters from the New York Times and Boston Globe have been approaching residents in grocery stores, even interviewing Palin's hairdresser about that now-famous up-do.
A friend from college actually e-mailed me recently, amused at having found an error in a Boston Globe story. “I only caught it because you taught me so much about Alaska,” he wrote.
The Globe writer, reporting from Wasilla, wrote that Palin grew up in nearby “Eager River.” As it happens, I lived in Eagle River during my high school years and usually cite it as my hometown. My friend was writing to say how exciting it was that Sarah Palin lived in my town for a few years.
He was sort of more excited than I was.
I can tell you that Wasilla is neither “remote” nor a “village,” as I've seen it called in recent weeks. It's also not the burgeoning metropolis it has also sometimes been made out to be.
It's a suburb. It's an hour north of Anchorage. It has a movie theater with three screens that I suspect has a policy against showing anything other than action films and kids' movies.
It has one mall, but most people go to Anchorage if they need to do any significant shopping — except when it comes to Wal-Mart, in which case ours is tops. We like to advertise the fact that in 2002, the Wasilla Wal-Mart sold more duct tape than any other in the nation.
Sarah Palin, who was then already governor, cut a red duct tape ribbon when the place upgraded to a Supercenter in 2007.
Part of me wishes I were back home right now to see the media circus. Although I would likely just hang around the grocery store hoping to spot Charlie Gibson or Maureen Dowd.
I suppose it's just our town's 15 minutes of fame, but in some ways I believe it will never be quite the same again. I used to say that I was from “a suburb of Anchorage,” not bothering to name the town that no one knew. Now though, I'll probably say I'm from Wasilla, and people will say, “Isn't that where Sarah Palin's from?”
I guess I could start saying I'm from Eager River.
E-mail to hheinz@abqjournal.com
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