Prohibition Village Style - Alaska

Alcohol, or the lack thereof, has never been a problem for me. When I was informed that Hooper Bay did not allow the consumption, possession, or sale of alcoholic beverages, however, the forbidden fruit, or grain in this case, seemed more appealing.

Prohibition works about as well here as the 18th Amendment did for the rest of the United States.

Home brew is made by the gallons here and it is no secret who makes it, who drinks it or who sells it. Most of the men and many of the women drink. In fact the only ones who do not drink are the teachers, and when they do they do not admit it to anyone. A teacher being found with alcohol gets a one way ticket out of the village at his own expense.

Once things are forbidden, they become desirable. Once desirability sets in, obtaining such becomes an obsession and once obsession grabs hold ignorance doesn't seem to be far behind.

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, said that when he first got here he thought it was unfair that the natives got by with drinking and he could not. He tried buying from the local bootlegger but at $150 a fifth it was too steep a price even for a teacher.

His dad was willing to send him alcohol in used after shave lotion bottles. "It worked in Korea," his dad told him. But that never came about. He turned to his mother for help, as all true men do when confronted with a problem, but she was doing penance in a convent and wouldn't be a party to such a thing. His brother, when told of his plight, was appalled and said he would supply all that was needed for $100 a fifth plus shipping and handling. Not a real close family I guess.

He flirted with the idea of mailing it to himself when he went home for Christmas and put his wife's former husband's return address on the package just in case postal inspectors decided to open the package or it broke in shipment. Plausible deniability I guess, but he chickened out.

Making his own was out of the question because he heard that the process smelled and would be a sure to attract attention. He told me that NyQuil on ice with a splash of seal oil was an urban myth and not to try it, it tasted terrible.

He was right. He eventually resigned himself to a life of sobriety, and so have I.

I asked one of my Eskimo friends that since most everyone in the village seemed to drink more often than not, why didn't they just vote prohibition out? They had that right; other villages had done so. Yes, my friend told me, they did have that right, but the elders were against legalizing alcohol and they respected the wishes of their elders.

There is logic somewhere there I guess.