“Men in Trees” Revisited . . . No, Talkeetna Bachelor Auction
Last Saturday night at VFW Post 3836 the much anticipated, long awaited yearly event was held with much noise and catcalls by the mostly female audience as the Talkeetna Bachelor Auction was held.
Before the event started there had been talk that it was over, that after 26 years this would be the last. Nobody really believed it and there is rumor that several people will step up to continue this annual tradition. The last of an era, maybe, with the exit of the two main organizers but not the last as several locals have said they won't let it die.
No matter what happens, it will never be the same. How can it be without Pam Rannals and DX Russell? They're the ones who've been putting this whole thing together - - the auction, the ball, the Wilderness Woman Contest, dealing with permits and personalities and countless little details. 26 years is a long time organizing an event reminding me of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve Gala every year who is also stepping down after this year. Rannals has been there since the beginning and has given of herself to the event that a lot of the single guys in town call her "Mom." Russell has given 10 years to the event making it one of the highlights to Talkeetna’s party season.
Nobody's serious, and it's all for a good cause. And not just because the event has produced two marriages, countless fleeting romances and one love child "that we know of," as Rannals says. It raises money for causes locals care about, from women and children in need, to kids' sports programs, to the arts. And the highest bidder gets quite a nice package, so to speak. Besides a drink and dance with her guy, she gets an adventure in Talkeetna, including a dinner, lodging, a boat trip and flight seeing tour for two.
The origins go back to 1981, when a bunch of guys sitting around the Fairview Inn at something like 39 below zero mixed loneliness with beer. As the story goes, one of them read an article about a debutante party in
In the early days, those card-carrying members of the Talkeetna Bachelor Society got slapped with a $100 fine if they got married “thinning the herd” as it were. And you could talk them into anything, like prancing about in nighties for a
Although each year the bachelors invited all the women in the world and quite a few showed up, it could never be enough.
The Wilderness Woman Contest, a test of what it takes to impress these guys, was added three years later, another ploy to lure even more women to town. This year, former Wilderness Woman Krystal Henson gave it another shot. She won the title 20 years ago, along with two round-trip tickets to a sunny climate and a fox-fur hat.
The women’s events this year included several things to qualify for this year's finals. They had to sprint down the street with two empty water buckets, exchange them for nearly full ones then waddle back without spilling too much. The five finalists (Krystal was not among them) went on to show their competence at everything from snagging "a chum in the bum," thanks to a late run of fake salmon, to moose dispatching - - nailing a bachelor in moose suit with a blast from a paintball gun.
But the most imperative skill of all was dashing to a picnic table, slapping together a sandwich, grabbing a can of beer and delivering it all, post haste, to a guy kicked back in front of a cardboard TV set. Spectators went wild when competitors open the beer on the fly, take a slug, shake it up real nice, and then hurl it at the bum's lap region.
This is not your typical Saturday night found in most parts of the country.
Now, instead of impulse shopping, women can check out the merchandise in advance through the Talkeetna Bachelor Society's Male Order Catalog. Included are this year's 43 specimens who ranged in age from 24 to 71, and in attire from coveralls to tuxedos and even a kilt. Included in the hoard were cooks, mechanics, pilots, teachers, carpenters, a gold miner, a Web page designer, "male escort," "professional boy toy," the "aimless wanderer” and a "whatever." I’m not real sure what that last one is but I may have had a third cousin like that when I lived in the south. As bachelor No. 30 claims in the Male Order Catalog, "All you are is a piece of meat to these women."
Where else but the Talkeetna Bachelor Auction could you get a room stuffed with women - - from grandmas in sweatshirts to babes in glove-tight gowns and weapons-grade heels - - going nuclear over some hip-gyrating guy missing his shirt, pants and a front tooth? You’ve got to love it here and probably most reading this will have no idea what Alaskan’s are trying to convey. It’s about fun, a different lifestyle, and the oddities found within the people of this north land.
This was not as tame or calm as the auction depicted in one of the first few episodes of “Men in Trees” but that is the beauty of the many places and the quirkiness that IS Alaska. It has a ‘state of mind’ here that is fun, a little rambunctious, and definitely off the beaten path.
“Men in Trees” is getting better but it keeps moving nights, currently seen Thursday’s on ABC.
* Photos by ADN photographer Marc Lester
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