Fairbanks, Alaska is where hippies, quakers, rednecks, laborers, natives, and any combination thereof usually live, and where army guys come to take dumps and pick up teenagers on myspace. We also get tourists, who
support the troops by parking RVs in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The dropout rate is 50% and the suicide rate is the highest in the country.
Fairbanks seems nice for a while, but once you get to know it you find out it's a lot like Stephen King's imagining of Derry, Maine with more freaked-out
alcoholics. If you doubted before that a whole town could be insane, you will no longer. You know those magic mirrors with an evil world
on the other side? Whitehorse, YT is on the good side of the mirror, and Fairbanks is the bad side. Repeat: Fairbanks is the bad side of the mirror.
Granddad, how come everyone in Fairbanks drinks
all the time?
To forget, Billy. There's things in the snow we'd just as soon forget.
And how come everyone has
night terrors where they scream in tongues about the old ones, and wake up with bleeding noses?
Well, Billy, I haven't lived many other places but I suspect that happens to everyone. Yep, I reckon it's just part of the
human condition.
