Bar at the end of the world

I’m diligently working the gate of a sheep fold at the end of the world, and I desperately crave a beer. The enclosure is on the outskirts of Lapataia, a hamlet of perhaps two hundred souls, twenty kilometers west of Ushuaia, and hugging the Beagle Channel. The sun is brilliant, and I’ve been warned repeatedly the overhead hole in the ozone will fry my eyeballs if I dare remove my Oakley’s.

In and around Lapataia, herds of sheep run through the streets like swirling snow flurries, white-capped mountains loom overhead, and penguins play on the rocky shoreline, diving in and popping out of the frigid, black water.

Boy, I could almost taste that cold beer, but the sale and possession of alcohol is banned here. The Tierra Del Fuego provincial government figures if an inebriate walks or drives beyond Ushuaia, they may enter a Chilean minefield, run over a sheep, or fall off a cliff, landing on and bruising a penguin. There are no roads north, the ice-incrusted Channel due south, and one road east, back to Ushuaia – the so-called “end of the world.” Heck, Ushuaia is a cosmopolitan paradise compared to Lapataia.

I’m sweating like crazy from wrangling the sheep at the gate of the fold, my gloves and clothes stinking of lanolin. I’m here because it’s my job to fit the millions, though perhaps I exaggerate, of sheep here with sunglasses, made by the Oculus Blinders Company of Joliet, Illinois, the world’s largest manufacturer of ovine and bovine and equine eyeball sun protection. One at a time, I corral a sheep at the fold’s gate, slide on the shades, cinch the elastic strap down tight, release them out the gate, then move on to the next sheep. Without the sunglasses, the critters would go blind in three or four months, then go crazy, walking in perpetual circles, bumping into objects, and other sheep, eternally.

Not exactly the job I envisioned after graduating with honors from the Ag program at SIU, having left Duluth four years earlier, but available opportunities were scarce. Oculus’ employment ad at Career Services said, “See the world, work with our four-legged clients, and develop some great stories to tell later in your career.” Well, the ad was far more honest than my considered alternatives, “Be all you can be” or “It’s not a job, it’s an adventure,” so here I am toiling under brutal blue sunshine while being blasted by summertime Antarctic winds.

Man, a beer would taste great right about now. The last one I had was in Ushuaia on New Year’s Eve, two months ago. Yes, downtown Ushuaia has a few legal watering holes, but otherwise, no other bars for hundreds of kilometers. The company refused to spring for my return Chicago airfare until the job was completed, but they did pay for a long weekend in a pleasant hotel, complete with a wonderfully appointed bar helmed by Miguel.

“Miguel, how about letting me take a dozen of these Quilmes with me?” I asked, pointing to my last bottle. I settled my tab for the night and tipped Miguel generously.

Miguel narrowed his eyes at me. “Aren’t you going back to Lapataia, Larry?”

“Well, yes, tomorrow,” I replied.

“Can’t help you, amigo.” He held up his palm in the universal “stop” sign. “I would be put in jail. Hell is an improvement over Argentine prisons.”

So, drinking a cold one is not going to be an option here in the tiny town of Lapataia, populated by sheep herders, countless sheep, and zero tolerance for alcohol.

Yet there once was a bar here; the sign on the wind-scoured, aged building clearly stated “Taverna,” with “Cerveza” beneath. The grey wooden building, complete with saloon-style doors, was still mostly upright, but long deserted. At the conjunction of two larger unpaved streets, the old bar’s walls displayed broken windows on both sides. Passing previously, I stared in, imagining a bartender sliding cold glasses of beer, in rapid sequence, down the wooden bar to me.

Another Tuesday, three in the afternoon, I’m tired of repeatedly…well, you know, putting sunglasses on sheep. I thought I had made that clear. So many sheep and sunglasses I had lost touch, and I still had cartons of the damn things piled to the ceiling of my rented room. The smell of lanolin and sheep dung scours my nostrils. Hundreds of blatting critters, who populate my nightmares instead of lulling me to sleep, swirl in the enclosure, give me another headache. Thousands more are yet to come down from the hills. There will be no return to civilization until I complete the job. I cursed sheep, South America, Oculus Blinders, and my lack of options.

Angrily, I grabbed the next sheep, a ram, and pulled the sunglasses downward. The strap snagged on his horns, and my right hand becomes entangled in the sunglasses’ strap, which was now also caught on the collar holding his bell. I had effectively tethered myself to the sheep, which proceeded to push past me at the gate and bolt towards the center of Lapataia, me running like hell alongside to stay on my feet, the rest of the escaping flock following the bellwether.

The sheep careened down main street, my gloved hand still caught in the elastic of the sunglasses, while butting me sideways with his horns. One blow knocked me off my feet, but the sheep continued to drag me along. In front of the old taverna, a flock of penguins milled around the old saloon-style doors of the deserted building. Crashing through the tuxedoed colony, we drive one poor frightened penguin in front of us as the ram, me still attached, plowed into the bar.

My initial reaction did not focus on how to disentangle myself from the bucking sheep. Instead, I considered how Oculus Blinders’ ad was entirely correct regarding “great tales to tell.” My subsequent thought, as I crashed through the doors, freeing the sheep when the elastic strap broke, was “A penguin, a sheep in sunglasses, and a guy from Duluth walk into an alcohol-free bar….”