And then there's the sort that says, "Damn bro! Just like the Chilly Willy cartoon!"

To the first group, I always say, "Nope, you're thinking of Haines, circa 1987."

To the second, I just nod and smile.

That's right, broseph. I may look human-esque to you here, in the aisle of a typical Lower 48 convenience store.

But when my plane veers north of the Queen Charlotte Islands, I turn into a talking animated penguin, perpetually wearing a red and white stocking cap. My fellow air passenger morphs into a talking dog, who goes by the name Smedley.

Once we get to the North Pole, we embark on a series of zany hi-jinks, most of which involve stealing fish from an uptight sea captain or outwitting a lumberjack.

Holy smokes, dude! Alaska is JUST LIKE Chilly Willy!

I get the Chilly Willy line all the time. I heard it from two people - operating independently of each other - at a wedding in Chicago. Then, none other than Del Tha Funkee Homosapien apparently made the crack last Friday while talking to the Anchorage Daily News.

You know what they say: If enough people suggest your life parallels that of a flightless, foot-tall, androgynous cartoon bird, sooner or later you'll start to believe it.

It happened to the people that run Chilly Willy's Car Wash out by the airport. Never mind that penguins don't even live north of the Galapagos Islands.

Whither thou, Chilly Willy? And what can watching Chilly Willy cartoons reveal to us about ourselves?

The studio that created Woody Woodpecker stopped making Chilly Willy cartoons 35 years ago, in 1972. But fortuitously, there's a guy on the Internet with an entire site dedicated to our friend.

Our new inter-office company Web software will no longer let us view www.juneaumusic.com. Thank God, no such problem with chillywillyfan.com - a treasure trove of 68 classic and contemporary Chilly Willy episodes.

My favorite, of course, is the 1965 cult-favorite, "Half-Baked Alaska." The scene opens, as so many Chilly Willy scenes do, with our hero shivering and hungry in a snow bank. Suddenly, he spies Smedley's snack bar.

Unfortunately, and this is just like modern Juneau, the flapjacks are selling for the exorbitant price of $10. Soon, again just like Juneau, broke Chilly is looking at a $60 tab.

Smedley kicks Chilly out in the tundra, and here's where the story departs from reality. In Juneau, the waitress would be right at his heels, demanding a 20 percent gratuity on top of a meal that's already been inflated to 400 percent of its actual cost.

In "Half-Baked," our indomitable bird applies for jobs as a piano player, barber, blacksmith assistant and photographer, before getting quickly fired for incompetence.

Chilly does not concede. Much like the pioneers of this great land, his resolve is strong. He hides in Smedley's chef hat, popping out to steal pancakes from the platter. And he replaces a pile of flapjacks with steel range covers, shattering the lumberjack's teeth and saving the snack bar.

That's perseverance, courage, willpower. And that, o' drunk guy at the Chicago wedding, is the Alaska way.

• Korry Keeker can be reached at 523-2268 or korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.