The Uniqueness of a Small Town!

Most people probably don’t think about what it takes to power their houses – when they plug in their hairdryer in the morning and it just works, they don’t think anything of it. Well, in Port Alexander, things are a little different. You can’t plug in your hairdryer in the morning unless your generator is on, which means you have to get up, get warm clothes on and go outside to start your generator. And, lets just hope you have fuel because if you don’t, you have to go siphon some out of a 50 gallon barrel then put it in your generator, then start it, then you can go inside to take your shower and blow dry your hair. Most people in PA don’t bother with things like blow drying their hair in the moning, but it was just an example that I thought would get my point across.

Here in PA, we have to fill 50 gallon drums with fuel from the Eyak, then depending on which side of the bay you live on, you have to either push them off the dock and tow them across the bay with your skiff, then roll them to your house. If you live on tract A, all you have to do is roll them to your house, but man, when it is low tide, good luck getting that drum up the ramp.

What made me think of all this is that I was sitting in my shop, which is right at the top of the pier and I saw Trevor and Dan rolling fuel drums up the ramp. They were the fuel drums for the City, so that means they have to go all the way to Bear Hall, which is pretty far away, so they had their work cut out for them.

It is just so different here. We get our power from generators, our heat from wood stoves, our hot water and ovens are fueled with propane, which is something even harder to mess with than fuel drums. Dragging a 100-pound propane tank out of our skiff and up to your house is pretty difficult. I can’t do it by myself that is for sure. Well, maybe I could; I haven’t tried since I was about 15-years-old.

Thankfully, this summer I only have to deal with a little generator at my house. It takes gas instead of diesel too, so it’s cheaper! It is a little 2000 wt generator, and it is pretty fuel efficient, so I don’t have to have too much gas to power the house. At the shop, I don’t have to deal with a generator at all, thank god. I have so much equipment in there that I would need one heck of a generator to power it all. If I wanted to be able to use more than one thing at a time I would need an even bigger one. But, Bill L. one of the men who lives in PA, he has a generator going 24/7 on the property across the boardwalk from my shop because he is powering a coast guard radio tower with it. So, he is letting me plug into his power for about $225 a month, which is actually sort of a lot, but man it is worth it to not have to deal with hauling fuel and starting and maintaining a generator, not to mention I would have had to buy a decent generator, too.

It truly is a different way of life here. Nobody could really picture or imagine it unless they came here. We get mail once a week in the winter and twice a week in the summer. It comes in on a boat…we don’t have any grocery stores, so we have to order everything from Sitka or Juneau or somewhere like that. It is really a different world.

I wish that everyone I know could come to PA and see the BEAUTY of this town. I don’t even know how to describe it. The trees, the ocean, the boardwalks, the starts, the smell; everything truely comes together to make the most beautiful place on earth.