“Shore
is cold ‘round here,” said Windy, stirring in more sugar.
“Went out this
morning to the pick ‘em=up truck and half my farkels were dang
near froze off
‘fore I got that heater a-goin.”
“I hear ya,”
said Dud.
“Lose more
farkels that way,” added Doc.
“Is farkels a
medicine word, Dod?”
“Not really,
but it says what you want to
say when it’s this cold.”
The talk went
along through two refills, a
side of bacon and a short stack.
“Bet it don’t
get no colder’n this in
Alaska,” said Dud.
“You’d be
wrong,” said Emma, she of the kind
smile carrying the ready coffee pot.
“Spent five years up there. Down
here in winter, you get cold. Up there in winter, you get
dead.”
She had our
rapt attention.
“You mean
chill factors and stuff like
that?” asked Doc.
“Nope,”
Emma said. “Want me to warm that
cup for you, Steve?”
Steve nodded.
Cup appropriately topped off.
She set the
coffee pot down on the next
table, which was empty. “They invented ways to kill people up
there. In winter,
it’s the williwaw.”
“Willy-what?”
“Williwaw. It’s a
wind, sorta,” she said.
“And if it hits you, you probably are going to die. It starts
up at the top of
a mountain and blows straight down a slope into whatever’s at
the bottom. Blew
one guy clear across Cook Inlet to the other side. The police
said if the inlet
hadn’t been frozen over, he’d have drowned.”
“Well, that
was a lucky thing, wasn’t it?”
“It woulda been if
he hadn’t froze to death
on the way down.”
- -
- -
Brought
to
you by Slim’s book “Strange Tales of Alaska,’ which may be
found on
Amazon.com.