Where the Bars Are Open Till 5 A.M.

Leroi Heaven is one resident who doesn't like all the things that got done. His family moved from Anchorage to the area in 1953, when his father decided to try his hand at farming after he retired from the railroad. Heaven was 14 years old, and, with only about 50 other residents nearby, the area was his wide-open paradise. Now Heaven is nostalgic for that frontier town on the edge of the wilderness, so full of promise and adventure.

One recent evening, squinting while sitting next to Heaven as he drove through the truck-choked streets—passing houses next to engine-repair shops, next to oil-spotted empty lots—I could easily imagine what Heaven saw in that former place. The rolling Talkeetna Mountains in the wild, cold distance to the north were just beginning to catch the glow of the setting sun; toward the south, the peaks of the looming saw-toothed Chugach Mountains were showing a first dusting of snow. (In Alaska we call that snow "termination dust," the mark of a coldhearted executioner putting an end to summer.) You can see what drew people like his father here and why he stays. You can see the vast open area where a person can carve his or her own dream; you can see the pioneer under a huge sky swirling with Northern Lights. You can hear the wolves howling in the distance and smell the cold and the burning spruce. You can feel freedom. But as you drive around Wasilla, you can also feel alienation—lost and alone in a land without boundaries.

Heaven, a Republican and a retired mailman, understands the thin line between freedom and chaos. He thinks the solution is in planning—in trying to limit and control change. As president of Wasilla's historical society, he has spent countless hours over the years trying to save what little there is of the old Wasilla. He fought for, and helped save, Wasilla's first store, which is now a coffeehouse. When Palin and others wanted to move the town's few original log cabins to an area outside town, he fought to keep them put. He's spent many hours trying to work with city hall to impose some sort of strategic vision. And now he's pretty much given up. He sticks to helping the museum and the library.

In a place where everyone seems to have an opinion about everything, Heaven speaks softly and he does so only after much prodding. So it was surprising when he used the word "embarrassing" to describe his town. He doesn't lay the blame squarely at Palin's feet for what has happened. (He understands that many of the town's decisions predated her.) However, he thinks she could have tried harder—when serving as a city-council member for four years, then as mayor for six—to keep some heart in the area that he calls home. He wishes that she would have spent less energy on business development and more on building a sense of community.

For him, it was a shame that the sports complex got built, even though he knows that his was a minority opinion. (Palin pushed to raise the city sales tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent to pay for the complex; according to the local paper, residents voted 306 to 286 in favor of the measure.) He thought the money raised from the sales tax should have gone toward a new library that would have been bigger than the old one, housed more books and brought more people together. "We don't have many places like that anymore."

Palin comes from a family of big sports fans. She told a reporter in 1996, after winning her race for mayor, that the "turning point in my life" was winning a high-school basketball game. "We were supposed to be the underdogs, big time," she said. "You see firsthand anything is possible and learn it takes tenacity, hard work and guts."

Now she has something akin to sports-hero status in Wasilla. People in the bars and in the stores believe that someone like them should—and could—go to the White House and even, perhaps, lead the country. People in Wasilla have stories about Palin saying "Hi" to them in the grocery store, on the soccer field, touching their shoulder, asking how they are. They are proud of their town, and proud of her. Over and over again, people say: "She's one of us. She understands us."

Coyne is a freelance journalist based in Anchorage. She’s the cofounder of alaskadispatch.com, an online magazine where commentators have been both supportive and critical of Palin.

© 2008