Quirks of Skagway

Copyright 2006 Lydia Hinshaw

SKAGWAY, AK -- Sitting in a coffee-shop, watching it rain, I just noticed that the young man behind the counter is the same fellow who waited on us Saturday night in a restaurant five blocks away.
This is Skagway, where help is in short supply and the average tourism worker can have as many jobs as he or she can schedule in a 24-hour day or seven-day week, but just in the summer. In the winter, I suspect, there are no jobs at all.
Computer geeks also are scarce, which is why there have been no updates to this blog for a while (and still no pictures.) Our one fringe benefit was supposed to be free Internet access, but it's been down for nearly a week. The problem is being worked on, by a gentleman whose main experience is in aircraft mechanics.
Among the things we haven't been able to find here are someone to cut a guy's hair (Prince Charming recently took scissors to his own after I declined this treacherous job), service a car or draw up a will. Not that we've needed this last, but there are no lawyers here, which some might say is a good thing.
No doctors either, and anyone in a condition too complicated for the physicians assistants in the local clinic gets loaded onto a six-seater plane with the rear seats removed and flown to the hospital at Juneau, 80 miles away but unreachable by road. I've seen people on stretchers being put on the little planes twice in the past seven weeks-plus.
Whitehorse, 110 miles away by road, also has a hospital, but it's in Canada which surely creates enormous complications for any American with medical insurance, and the usual enormous expense for any American without. Expectant mothers here either move to Juneau two weeks before their due dates, or they plan on heading to Whitehorse when they go into labor. Babies born in Whitehorse (or in a car or ambulance on the other side of the border) are eligible for Canadian citizenship and health benefits, which is a good deal considering that as long as a family lives here, the easiest pediatricians to reach will be in Canada.
Earlier today I went in the one supermarket where bananas are still $1.19 per pound, even though they are almost brown enough and soft enough to be used for banana bread. The weekly grocery barge arrives tomorrow, so some of the shelves are bare already.
This is definitely an unusual place to live.