Word: barrowful
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Another problem is unemployment, which stands at more than 50%. The population has doubled since the end of World War II, but jobs have not kept pace. Some people have moved away, but the close-knit community life in Barrow ties its residents to the city. The Prudhoe Bay oil strike, 200 miles to the east, has so far meant only about two dozen jobs in Barrow. The Government remains the biggest local employer; there is a branch of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for example, and a Naval Arctic Research Lab just outside town...
...amenities that most Americans take for granted are hard to come by. Pipelines for natural gas, used to heat homes in Barrow, must run above ground, because the earth is permanently frozen from a few inches below the surface to a depth of 1,300 ft. Gas lines snake through the settlement resting on half-sections of 55-gal. oil drums; at intersections, the pipe is framed in wood and runs overhead on gateways that look like crude Japanese torii. The impenetrable ground also makes sanitation a problem. Although the U.S. Public Health Service has promised to help with sewers...
...Barrow's Eskimos worry about the influence of cultural and social change. "Our way of living, our mode of dress, our language are going," says Mrs. Neakok. "You hardly see anyone in furs any more; now they have fancy corduroy parkas." There are still a few in Barrow who carve the ivory tusks of walrus into artful figures, but that also is going, and the settlement's 400 snowmobiles have entirely replaced the dog sled. About the only thing that has survived from the old days is the hunt. The men still hunt whales from fragile little boats...
...Barrow's postmaster, Lester Suvlu, 34, says wryly: "Our problems are just about like those in any other community-booze, delinquency and finances." The young are Barrow's main concern. Some teen-agers have resorted to petty thievery from shops and homes, and others once tried to form a teen-age gang. More than half the population is under 16, yet Barrow has no high school. The youngsters must go off to schools elsewhere in Alaska or even in the "Lower 48." They come back only to find nothing to do. One hope is that the U.S. Navy...
...before John Malcolm Brinnin's monstrous work is seized by chanting ecologists, the unrepentant book lover will wheel his barrow to the store and bring home a copy. One reason for doing so is that it contains not one scrap of information that is essential, or even useful, to civilization's forward lurch...