Good morning. Hello. How are you? #428
Alaska day 4. My dad's funeral. A rant about companies buying houses. A TMI bit at the end.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am okay. Increasingly covered in mosquito bites. Hung over. Feeling a bit rough today. Like this beautiful birch tree at the cemetery next to my dad.
Yesterday was my dad’s funeral. It was sad. It is hard to write about. The morning was spent on prep — Val doled out tasks and we went and got things done. I went and found a guest book, and some cups and I don’t remember what else. I remember realizing, while in the parking lot for Barnes and Noble (I swear to god I thought they were out of business I wonder if this is a Blockbuster situation) that there are no Teslas in Alaska. No electric cars at all, really. I wonder why that is. Probably batteries and cold. But you think you’d see one or two in the summer, the way you see one or two convertibles in the summer. But nope. Just trucks. So many fucking trucks here. So many pointlessly big trucks. Trucks you can’t see around when you’re behind them on the road. Trucks that spout filth into the air, trucks that are as loud as jet airplanes. So. Many. Trucks. And grey vans. Like the go-away grey that survivalists love. People here love grey vans.
All these Republican and Libertarian truck owners up here in a town where the two biggest industries are government-run. I’m such an independent man, yes I am, I’ve just… been employed by the government my entire life. Honestly what is with the military? They are, like, the most egalitarian, socialist, government-run, non-freedom-having organization in America and they all love it and they are all Republicans, living off of the government with government health care. It is real weird. You’d think they'd all be voting for Bernie.
The other night at the Malemute, before my friends got there, I was sitting at the bar alone, listening to the bartender talk to a patron about how she’s moving from North Pole to Aurora, the neighborhood where I grew up. She was, like, “I have three jobs, they’re all in Fairbanks, I drive back and forth from Fairbanks to North Pole constantly and I am so sick of it, I’m so sick of driving.” Then she felt compelled to defend living in Aurora, in a moderately walkable neighborhood, because around here, people think you’re weird if you, like, don’t live in the middle of nowhere and survive by car. It was such a hilarious inversion from all of my friends elsewhere. This poor woman being defensive about wanting to live in a — gasp — neighborhood.
Went to the Walmart and I noticed that the cloth section is, like, ten times bigger than the cloth section at my Walmart. I would love to peek into the office at Walmart corporate that decides how big to make the cloth section at any given Walmart. What kind of research do they do, I wonder. Do they wing it? Conduct surveys? I mean, I guess I’m not surprised Fairbanks has a bigger cloth department? But it seems very odd that Walmart, like, knew to do that.
Was driving home from Walmart, on the Parks, and the windows were down and my hair was down, and I was listening to some good song, and I was thinking about a story my sister told me about having skidded off the road in front of these rich people’s house, and the wife brought val into the house so she could make a phone call (it’s a cell dead zone) and she said the house was gorgeous and the wife was super helpful and the husband was off in a corner “checking his stocks,” and I was thinking, for a brief second, how, yeah, if I had some amazing house out in the woods, with a good internet connection, I could imagine living here.
But then I remembered that there was yes another murder-suicide in Fairbanks just a few days ago, and I came back to my senses.
Ran into the hotel, picked some stuff up, dropped some stuff off, and Nick texted me a photo of him and Jane from my house. Nick, his wife Meghan, and our friend Abby are all at my house. I’ll see Abby when I get home, but Nick and Meghan were just in the area for the weekend. It’s so disorienting, seeing all of these people here in Fairbanks that I haven’t seen in decades, so many good friends, and then at home there are more good friends. After months and months and months and MONTHS with nothing to do, I suddenly have too much to do and it is… real weird. And while I like the things and the people and the doing, I also kinda still like not doing anything and I miss my Youtubers and I miss Mythbusters and my fast internet connection — I swear to god the internet just hates Alaska. But. yeah. Post-pandemic life, it’s a lot. I think I’m just going to go back to pretending the pandemic is a thing.
As I drove up Yankovic to the funeral, Love and Rockets’ “Dog End of a Day Gone By” came on the car stereo. This was the song playing when I totaled the family Caravan when I was sixteen, unable to brake on black ice, skidding into another car. My dad stuck up for me then. I decided it was a sign.
It was a good funeral, as funerals go. About fifty people showed up. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in thirty, forty years. My dad’s old bowling buddy, his partner on the police force. A few fellow Lions Club members. It was very emotional. We had the service, then most people left, then my uncle, my sister, and few friends stayed behind to place the urn into the niche, and we said a few more words.
I said that my father was one of the few men I ever knew of — especially in the 1970’s — who would routinely tell his son he loved him. He would hug me. He would kiss me. I didn’t realize how rare that was, and it has slowly dawned on me through the years. He was always there to stick up for you, to bail you out. Another thing I learned later in life is what a phenomenal photographer he was. He always encouraged the hobby, but I didn’t realize until much later, when I started scanning his slides, how good of a photographer he was.
We had a family dinner at the Pump House afterwards, which is a good place still, though the servers got progressively more sick of our shit as the evening went on. And you could tell what they thought of us by not only adding the gratuity — fine, yes, you’re supposed to do that — but not even leaving a spot to add an additional gratuity. It made me sad. But I had good talks with my aunt and uncle and cousins and I met my second cousins, I think they’re called. My cousin’s kids. One of them has the middle name Violet like Jane.
And then Val and I and cousin Mary and Jamie head to Ivory Jack’s, where we drank away our sorrows. Val Lord made it out which was just fantastic, got to meet and chat with her family. Ran into Athena again. Mused about how Ivory Jack’s hasn’t put a door on the men’s room in twenty years. What’s up with that? Did they decide the place is just perfect as it is? That nothing could be changed?
It was a god night, but I drank too much. Mary gave me a ride home, I left my car at the Pump House. I don’t like driving and drinking it stresses me out, even a single drink. So this morning, with a raging hangover I had to take a cab to the Pump House and get my car.
On the way home, I stopped by the cemetery again, up on Yankovic, and had a good cry and said goodbye to my dad. It didn’t give me the catharsis I needed or wanted, but maybe it was the first step.
I want to go home.
The irrational anger portion of today’s email: These fucking companies buying houses. First there was the Blackstone or Blackrock or whatever thing about buying a ton of houses, and now there are a bunch of VC-backed companies buying a ton of houses to put them on Airbnb. Just fucking great. I mean, I guess it’s totally okay that this is legal, it would be absurd to make it illegal, but my god can’t capitalism just, like, leave one thing alone? “Hrm, what do the middle class still have?" “Well, Jim, some of them – not very many anymore, but some of them still own houses.” “Well shit, we can’t have that! Let’s buy all the houses!” I don’t feel rational about it. Also, the Airbnb angle just makes it worse in so many ways. Like, first, I don’t like Airbnb I like hotels because living in other people’s houses is creepy and weird. And secondly, haven’t these VCs learned their lesson about building their startups on the back of another Unicorn startup’s platform? Because you know what’s going to happen? Airbnb is going to start buying houses, and they are going to screw these people. But, then, I suppose that’s just fine. Except for the part where big companies are buying up houses. Screw that.
The TMI portion of today’s email: I’ve wounded my scrotum somehow, and whenever I sit with my legs closed, it stings. I don’t know what’s going on. Like maybe a bug bite or something. But every time I close my legs, and I get this sharp sting, and I think Ow!
And then I think: Well I sure am glad I don’t have to go on the New York Subway. People would think I’m a manspreader.
Point of information, there are a few Teslas in Anchorage. Which is technically ALaska. There are also plenty of big trucks to balance out the Teslas. There’s a couple of adorable little Smart cars here too. Only come out in summer.
Wish our trips overlapped.
I’ll arrive there in the ‘Banks on Thursday.