Quote:
Originally Posted by Goodpasture
It's so funny......so many people come on here thinking that cost of living, cost of taxes, cost of food, availability of work, health services, climate, threat of tornadoes, ice storms, can all be added up in some sort of profile, then matched against some other area's profile, and the "right place" be quantified in some sort of ratio for livability.
We may not have lots and lots of money. We may not drive a new car. But I will put our quality of life against anyone anywhere. I will put the quality of our neighbors against anyone else's as well. I too wish a lot of the money rubbers would leave. We really don't need them.
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Alaska went through the same kind of thing in the early '70s, but from a somewhat different perspective. I don't know which came first, the Land Claims Settlement or the North Slope development - probably one was the instigation for the other. Suddently a lot of things changed, and not always for the better. There were jobs on the Slope, and the oil companies poured a lot of money into it - but a lot of those jobs went to experienced oil field workers from OK and TX. They didn't count on the radically different climate, though, and there were a lot more injuries than there would have been if they'd trained locals. There was a story about a Texan who always wore cowboy boots no matter how cold it was, and he always told new comers that once they'd survived their first winter in the Far North, they'd be able to do it, too. What he didn't tell them was that he'd lost both feet to frostbite HIS first winter, and the cowboy boots were prosthetics. They did hire some locals, a friend of mine was an as-built surveyor on one of the construction sites for several years, then went to work for one of the companies in Anchorage doing the same kind of thing. But once she wasn't needed on the Slope anymore, she and others like her suddenly became 'independent contractors' which meant no benefits of any kind, and the take home wages stayed the same, while the company absorbed what would have been their payroll deductions.
Then the tankers started showing up. You think trucks are bad on roads, anyone remember the Exxon Valdez? Over 10 million gallons of crude floating around. It reached Kodiak, well over 70 miles away and washed up on the beaches there. Villages, archeological digs, it was an utterly incredible mess. A lot of the villagers went into severe clinical depression, and mourning for their way of life vanishing Then, to top that off, one of the oil company bright boys threw into a dumpster at the Kodiak airport a pile of papers that mapped out all the known prehistoric village sites slated for future digs - it was supposed to be one of those eyes-only, need-to-know documents, that was blown out of the dumpster by the wind. Fortunately, they were found by someone who knew just what they were seeing and took them to the appropriate people.
A lot of the oil workers stayed because they really did like the country, but as beautiful as it is to look at, AK is not what anyone would consider user-friendly. Ignorance can get a person killed in a heartbeat. And there were also on Kodiak, some military retirees who wanted the hunting and fishing, and bought land to build the wife's dream house. To this day, it boggles me that anyone would pay extra $$ for a wooded lot, then cut the trees down and bulldoze what's left so they can have a lawn!
It's been 8 years since we left, and my son and friends tell me not to even think of going back even to visit, it's changed that much - that what I've been homesick for is the past.
And that's one of the things I like about OK. The people I've met here are pretty much like the people I met when I first went to AK - and the first time I got off the plane there, I felt like I was finally coming home.
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06-29-2008, 02:58 PM
Just another pic...
And they're destroying our native land as well. They have been testing out on our place. If they come in, I'm gonna fight 'em every step of the way. I know I can't stop them, but it won't be fun for them...LOL
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