Dogs and Beans - Alaska Traveler - page 71

By eleven I can no longer feel my toes and I head back toward the Fourth Avenue
Theater. On the way I notice that Mike has acquired a boom box and is serving hot dogs to
a long line of people to the beat of “Back in the USSR” Darwin's Theory, a small, smoky,
friendly bar on G Street, is packed with locals watching the start on television. At the
corner of 4 th and G, Jana Hayenga's shop, Cabin Fever, has been doing a booming busi-
ness since 8 a.m. “Iditarod T-shirts and Shannon Cartwright topics,” she says when asked
what's selling best.
At the door to the Fourth Avenue Theater, Quey has packed away cocoa and books and
has folded her chair. The door opens and the crowd, which now extends around two entire
sides of the block, surges forward. “Dogs and beans,” says Larry Taylor, there with his
wife, Patty. “That's why we're here, dogs and beans.” Patty wears a beautiful parka with a
gold sheen to the fur. “Wolf,” she says. “The neighbor's dog,” Larry says. There are
groans from bystanders.
The Empty Bowl is a benefit for Bean's Cafe, a local soup kitchen, and is sponsored by
the Clay Arts Guild, a local potters organization. Professional and student potters throw
and glaze bowls for months prior to Iditarod start day and donate them to the Empty
Bowl. This year there are over 2,000 bowls and a ticket sold for every one of them. For
$14 you get to pick out a bowl and fill it full of, this year, either calypso bean stew or ve-
getarian bean soup, with cornbread on the side and the Anchor Steam Fiddle Band sawing
away on stage. The Empty Bowl has been called THE social event of the Iditarod, but I
confess, getting inside where it's warm and where I can sit down is its main attraction for
me.
When I come out again, full and warm, the sun is overhead, shining down on 4 th Aven-
ue, where only paw prints and sled tracks left behind in the jumbled snow show where the
dogs and their mushers have been.
And finally O Lord / lead us to our final destination / and the end of the trail.
—Richard Burmeister, “The Musher's Prayer”