Going through the door of the aptly named Freedom Tavern was actually a movement of stepping back in time. I had seen photos of places like this in America, locations where people gathered, paid for alcoholic beverages, sought out conversation, companionship, or simply a moment away from the countless other distractions and responsibilities of life. Environments of rough hewn communion where both the best and worst aspects of humanity were openly on display.

While the practice of owning a business that served alcohol had not been formally prohibited by the New United Nations’ mandates, the taxes and unavoidable fines levied against those businesses made their existence increasingly prohibitive until, inevitably, they simply died out. The last privately owned drinking establishment I had witnessed was nearly fifteen years ago when I was not yet fifteen years old. And that one was for the very wealthy only, as the cost of alcohol had increased multiple times in just a few short years following the N.U.N. mandates and resulting taxes so that only the rich could afford to purchase alcoholic beverages. Everyone else was left like me – looking at pictures of an America that once was, but would never be again.

Here in this remote and secretive Alaskan community of some 100 people, a tavern still stood, though – privately owned and its doors open to the public. Music came from an antique contraption I knew to be called a “jukebox”, where a song from generations before titled
Sweet Home Alabama
played in the background.
Above the jukebox hung an original fifty-state American flag – another example now forbidden by the New United Nations mandates. A few years ago a man in Portland, Oregon had been arrested for refusing to take down an original American flag that he displayed outside his apartment balcony. Soon after he was found dead from what authorities described as a robbery. The only thing taken had been the flag.

I am certain my face registered clear shock as I took in the unmistakable smell of burning tobacco, and saw no less than three men seated at the bar smoking IN PUBLIC, with open bottles of beer sitting in front of each of them. These men were smoking cigarettes! Unlike alcohol, cigarettes had been banned outright by the mandates – cited as dangerous public hazards and “prohibitive to the well being of society”. That was just over 20 years ago. I remembered lessons on the ban during my final years of high school, the teacher reviewing all of the reasons supporting the ban, and how it was our responsibility not to question, but to simply accept these newly developing rules of the world society. We were also instructed to turn our parents into the authorities if they continued to smoke inside their homes because by doing so, we were told, they were putting our lives at risk and were in fact guilty of serious child abuse. One of my boyhood friends in fact did just that – his father was charged with the crime of smoking/child abuse and spent six months at an adult education facility. By then the government no longer used the term prison, or jail – almost all forms of discipline were simply called “education”.

Apparently the men with cigarettes dangling from their mouths didn’t get the lesson. The tobacco smoke hung over them in the low-ceilinged structure like their own personal clouds of defiance. Each of their faces, weathered, worn, and hard, also appeared quite content. One of them laughed at the ending joke of a story told by another, clapping his hand on his shoulder and shaking his head while the third of them gestured to the person behind the counter…the “bartender” if my memory was correct, for another beer.

It was all so remarkable. As I said, I was convinced I had somehow literally stepped back into time – an America before the New United Nations. An America where personal freedoms still existed in some form and all those rules to protect the “well being of society” were not yet fully implemented. An America that still governed itself.

An America before the New United Nations.

The man behind the bar looked directly at me as I noted both the intensity of his stare and the familiarity of the face from the few photos of him my dad had shown me. Through the dim lighting of the tavern I could make out his face was now far older than those photos, more gaunt, but I was certain it was him. He was nearly my own height of six foot, the years having bent his back just a bit, with a narrow, deeply lined face framed by square-rimmed glasses and shortly cropped salt and pepper hair. I raised my eyebrows in an attempted greeting, hoping he was in fact the one I had come to see.

His right hand motioned for me to come down to the far end of the bar where only an empty stool resided. Before sitting down I extended my own hand across the bar to further communicate I came in peace, this time including what felt to be both an awkward and nervous smile on my part.

“Sit.”

It wasn’t an offer – it was a directive. I found myself following the order without even thinking about it. Though the volume of the word was barely audible, the tone of authority was unmistakable.

Again I gave up the same weak smile as I further looked over the man I had traveled some four thousand miles to interview – the individual my recently deceased father had worked tirelessly to free from prison for the manufactured crime of defending the defenseless. A soldier wrongly accused, sent away to serve as an example to others – keep your mouths shut. That event was long before my own time, but my father had shared it with me often. It had become for him, and then for me, one of the critical examples of how America had gone so wrong, so quickly, and so completely. The events of the trial took place almost twenty five years ago. My father had now been dead for just over a year.

“Go talk to him. In Alaska. He owns a bar up there. Actually owns his own bar! Imagine that. Might be the last privately owned bar in the country. Let him tell you his story. Some of it is my story too, but it’s mostly his. I just played a part in it. If people are going to wake up, we all need to hear those stories. How things were. How they changed. You say you want to fight. I’ve protected you from that, but I won’t be around long enough to stop you now. So, you go talk to him. I have the location in the file, his file. It’s all there. Kept it hidden away from the U.N. audits. After the trial, he disappeared for quite a few years. Then I received a brief message, and we have been communicating on and off ever since. He’s a hero, you know. And that’s why they did to him what they did. Obama. Jarrett. They killed others. Afghanistan. The purge. They set him up, sent him to prison. But I got him out. The last real thing…the last real work I did as an attorney. The rest was bullshit. But I did something good there. And so, if you really want to do this, I can’t stop you from it. From the truth. So you go see him. I told him you were coming, so go ahead. You have my blessing. Take the information…I’m not sure what you think you can do with it, and you’ll be watched, you know. They’re all being watched. The entire community up there. Sooner or later there will be a conflict. He knows it. They all know it, and, you might find yourself in the middle of all that. You WILL find yourself part of that just by having been there. But, I should have taken you with me back then. When I visited him up there. I should have taken you, your brother, your mother…all of us. We should have gone away from here – from all these rules, the spying, the damn government…and never looked back. Don’t end up like me in some bed with your body wasting away into nothing. I’m already gone. Your mother, brother…you’re all that’s left of us. If you want to go talk to him, you have my blessing. And once you get there, maybe…maybe you don’t come back. Make your stand with them. Make your life count for something.”

My father would be dead within a month of speaking those words to me. An extremely rare form of cancer resistant to any of the latest treatments. One in a million, the doctor told me. Never seen anything like it, said another specialist. It took him from relative health to his deathbed in just over six months, and though he never came right out and said it, his eyes told the truth of it at the end – that cancer was no accident. It was no one in a million happenstance. Or just bad luck. Funny how nobody within the government dies from cancer anymore.

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