Anyuckokofrah in happier days.

As we walked to the fair I began to smell the Inuit specialty foods that were so popular at fairs. The first smell to fill my nose was that of roasted baby seal whiskers. There is nothing so tasty as a crunchy whisker while you ride around on the Ferris Wheel.

Of course, when I was a child, the county was too poor for a Ferris Wheel, so the strongest man in the county, Anyuckokofrah, was hired to throw the children in the air. Adults were not allowed on the "Anyuckokofrah Wheel," as we liked to call it.

So there we were on our way to the county fair, dreaming of roasted whiskers, and my mother nervous about the other children. She needn't have worried — by the time we arrived at the fair, all of the other children were dead.

Apparently, Anyuckokofrah had gotten very drunk. The first child paid for a ticket on the Anyuckokofrah Wheel and Anyuckokofrah threw him into the Inuit Spear Exhibit, which was never opened again. This tragedy only drove Anyuckokofrah to drink more, and drink he did.

Then he started asking parents if he could throw their children, promising that he could still do it properly. The parents refused. He promised. They refused. So he covered himself with snow as a disguise, and he began to sneak up on children and throw them for a free ride.

Of course, every child he threw died. Into the cooking fire; over the cliff that the fair was located on; another one into the Exhibit. It was horrible. When we arrived, Anyuckokofrah was passed out in the middle of the fairgrounds and the parents had covered him with penguin feathers, which are the traditional coverings of a guilty man.

Mother and I enjoyed the fair. We ate whiskers and threw eggs at polar bears. It was wonderful. But then Anyuckokofrah woke up. In his drunken state I guess he thought mother crouched down was a child, and he picked her up, screaming "jvoo kwan go ma tuk tuk fooger schly!" which roughly translates to "I'm not drunk and get these penguin feathers off me!"

He picked up my mother and threw her further than any of the children had been thrown. She flew through the air like a rock, but graceful like a bird, screaming like a wailing banshee. She was like a banshee bird rock. She landed on a pile of grass, and everyone sighed with relief, until we remembered that grass rarely grew in the arctic.

We had laid out grass on the tundra to attract polar bears — they would stand on the grass and fall into the trap underneath. It was a hunting plan devised by father. He died testing the strength of the grass cover. In those days, he believed that the fall had to kill the bear, so he dug a hole 30 feet deep. He jumped up and down on the grass, fell through, and died as soon as he hit the bottom.

Mother lay there on the grass, unaware of where she was. When she started to stand up, the grass gave way, and down she went.

That was not such a good day.