The United States Army Band trombonist Staff Sgt. Victor Barranco was born, raised and schooled in North Pole, Alaska.
Now one may ask how a horn player of Puerto Rican descent becomes a resident of a town 1,700 miles south of the real North Pole, and where the average low temperature in December is 17 degrees below zero.
The answer involves the United States Army.
"I'm probably one of the only Puerto Rican Alaskans you'll ever meet," Barranco said with a smile full of holiday spirit. "My dad was drafted [by the Army] during [the] Vietnam [War] from Puerto Rico. He was stationed at Fort Wainwright for one stint and fell in love with Alaska, and he decided to live up there."
The town of North Pole has approximately 2,200 inhabitants, and December finds the city in high gear. Besides a house inhabited by a jolly old elf who wears a fluffy red suit, the town hosts a winter festival with all the holiday trimmings.
And Barranco vividly remembers the winter festival music concerts, the candy cane-striped utility poles, the crystal-clear fresh air and his time as a youth in the town near Fairbanks.
"It's like an island in the middle of Alaska," he said. "We go five minutes in any direction, and you're in bear country and moose country. I miss fishing. I would go fishing for salmon all the time."
He gets home every so often, and for those he brings to North Pole, faith in Kris Kringle becomes strengthened with a visit to the town's most famous resident.
"In North Pole, there's Santa Claus Lane and Santa Claus' house," he said. "I took my wife there, and he [Santa] could name the streets she grew up on in Houston, Texas."
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