Kenai was a wild town when Mayor Williams arrived from Fairbanks 22 years ago. It was dirty and dusty; oil had just been discovered and “there was a shooting a week.” That first oil field on the Kenai Peninsula, the Swanson River oil field, has the deepest oil well in Alaska. Its total depth is 17,689 feet.

Williams has seen his city through rich and poor times. He was here in ’86 when the price of oil fell and 30,000 people left the state.

There are canneries along the bluff south of Kenai and here in Kasilof. The oil refineries, natural gas refinery and chemical fertilizer plant are all north of Kenai. From the bluff you can see the offshore oil drilling platforms. A large rig used to explore for oil is spending the winter in Kenai. I went to see it from the bluff.

It’s a large platform with three legs that are 40 stories tall. They are jacked up so it can float. When it has reached its destination, the legs, which resemble scaffolding, are geared down through the platform. The platform is resting on them now on the shore. From where I stood, the men walking on the platform looked very small. It is a massive technological town that floats.

Oil is important to Alaska. Most Alaskans I have talked to want to see drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Range. Oil is black gold. Every Alaskan receives some of the oil money every year.

The permanent fund was established by the state in 1976. It’s a trust fund made up of oil and mineral royalties invested by the state of Alaska for the people of Alaska. Every year some of the earnings on this money are distributed to the population. In 1991, the checks were $984 and every man, woman and child received one.

Alaska receives 85 percent of its general revenue from oil and mineral royalties. The mill rate in Kenai is 2.75. In addition to those benefits and the permanent fund dividend check each year, senior citizens receive $250 each month after the age of 62.

As oil production continues to decline and the economy slackens, it is easy to understand why Alaskans want ANWR developed.

And yet, according to “Facts About Alaska,” “if the Alaskan Permanent Fund was a Fortune 500 company, it would be in the top 5 percent in terms of net income. It is the largest pool of money in the country and the only fund to pay dividends to residents.”

The area also is known for its commercial and sport fishing.

Someone said I could catch my limit of “Reds” (sockeye salmon) in two hours, but others say that depends on how they are running.

This past summer was not a good one for the commercial or sport-fishing industry. People have said the lack of fish is something that happens cyclically and they don’t expect this year to be much better.

Millions of dollars are made in a very short amount of time during a good year. Ten years ago the fishing season for halibut was 100 days, now it is 24 hours for commercial fishermen. Since they can’t let those 24 hours pass without catching fish, they sometimes go out in terrible weather and some of them die out there.

Some of the halibut fishermen feel they have taken a kick in the teeth. They have been told recently they will be able to catch only a percentage of their total catch in the past, but will be able to fish whenever they want instead of going out only during the dangerous 24-hour period. This new fishing quota pleases the larger companies from Seattle, but not the smaller fishermen who live around here. They are the ones whose quotas haven’t been as large.

The woman I rent from is a fabric artist who supports herself with a job as a foreman on the dock of a nearby cannery. She can make $25,000 in four months in a good year. Last year she made $1,500. I’ve met another woman who fishes commercially in Prince William Sound. Some people work the canneries in the summer and mush dogs in the winter.

But this is a “rich” state. The state even has a $6.8 million budget for domestic violence programs. The number of women who died in Alaska in 1989 as a result of domestic violence is 33. An Alaskan state trooper told me some people move here for the isolation, and in that it is easier to control the members of their house with violence.

When the mayor gave me a tour of Kenai, he showed me the new senior citizen housing, new visitors and cultural center, the airport, library, recreational center, new supermarket under construction (the largest in Alaska) and a fire-training school under construction. He also showed me the historic Russian Orthodox Church and the oldest bar in town.

Mayor Williams is very proud of his town. At the end of the tour we drove into the yard of the Women’s Resource and Crisis Center. “This place is always full and needs to be bigger,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s these damned macho men,” he added.

Across the street is housing for teen-agers who cannot, for one reason or another, live at home. “These are the things we are ashamed we need, but every community does,” he said.

Nancy Watson, a Fort Fairfield native, is experiencing Alaska.