As the world turns

Last night a story came across about the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival and how a bunch of rowdies disrupted it. The festival is the small town’s summer carnival and gets its name from what moose leave behind in winter.

With no leaves or grass, moose generally eat twigs in winter and their droppings are little nuggets of pressed wood, with a consistency somewhat like particle board used in building houses. There is no smell, the nuggets are as hard as wood and you can pick them up with no ill effects. People even make jewelry out of them.

But not everyone gets the humor of moose droppings. One woman Outsider heard of the festival and wrote a very angry, demanding letter wanting to know how far they dropped those moose and were they hurt. For a while the logo for the festival became a moose dangling in a sling from a helicopter. So, this festival has been going on for 37 years as a family friendly affair with a tongue in cheek sense of humor. Until this year.

Apparently a group of youngsters from out of town raised hell, drinking and carousing and ruined it for the regular folks. One of the carousers even drowned when he jumped into the river and never came up.

The story quoted an Amanda Randles, a bartender at the Fairview Hotel (which is a story all its own). She was complaining about how the festival was disrupted.

Having known the Talkeetna community for years (it is the closest town to the East Pole) I questioned whether that name was correct. I know a Pam Randles from around that country and also a Pam Ranalls, who I know is a bartender there. I discussed it with a woman at work who is familiar with the area and even asked the reporter how old she thought the source was, thinking maybe she had gotten the name wrong. She said the woman sounded between 20 and 40. That didn’t fit with the age of the women I was thinking about. This led to a discussion of the two women and eventually to Pam Randles’ husband Slim and we what remembered about the two of them. It was in that discussion that the realization hit.

Their daughter was named Amanda. I remember holding her in my arms when she was a baby just struggling with her first words. At the time Slim and I both had long dark beards and dark rimmed glasses. To the chagrin of all of us, the baby tugged hard on my beard and said “Da-Da” for the first time.

But, I thought she would be too young to be a bartender at the age of 20 or so. Then we started going through the years. O M G! By our count she has to be 36 or 37. This little girl whom I remember mistakenly calling me Da Da is not only old enough to be a bartender, she is old enough to be the bartender in a famous Alaska saloon. But worse than that: SHE IS OLD ENOUGH TO BE COMPLAINING ABOUT THOSE DAMNED KIDS!

Can the Pioneer Home be far off?