I often do when I think of what Franklin Street was like three decades ago. Those were days far removed from $4.50 pints. A night on the town still had the potential to turn into a Clint Eastwood film.

Most importantly, the bars were open until 5 a.m., as they still are in Haines.

Those two extra hours take on a marvelous, semi-sadistic tint of desperation. The very color of the room seems a little bit lighter. The moon lies just out of reach, and beyond it, quarks and quasars and a fantastic, elastic cosmos full of infinity and a new sense of oneself.

Ask Will Hobbs, an Oregon singer/songwriter who was blown away by Juneau's late nights when his band, Wheatfield, visited in March 1977. He returns this weekend, solo, to play a 9 p.m. Saturday show at Doc Water's Pub.

"It was more of a frontier spirit for sure," Hobbs said. "My frame of reference is Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. The scene in Alaska was quite different. I like to think of it as a little wilder and woolier."

The Credence-style Wheatfield was one of the most renowned bands in the Pacific Northwest at the time, though they never signed a record contract.

The band may be best known for "Whale Song (Roll Back The Years)," a folk song about, what else, saving the whales. A Greenpeace activist once went out during a whale-mating season off the coast of Hawaii and piped it into the sea using a set of underwater speakers.

Just before 8 a.m. on an early-March morning in 1977, Hobbs and a few of his fellow whale-lovers disembarked from a state ferry at Juneau's old downtown terminal.

From there, they walked a half-block to scope out the now-legendary Crystal Saloon, where they would be playing a week later. A few feet inside the door, they caught their first glimpse of Juneau's then-maverick spirit.

The bartender and one of the waitresses were on top of the pool table, locked in the throes of unfathomable delight.

"I said, 'Ignore them,'" Crystal co-owner Peter Metcalfe said. "'Let's carry on.'"

But that image - burned as it must have been into the band's collective cortex - was inspiration enough to carry it through a disappointing trek into the state's snowy reaches. They played an armory in Anchorage, and only 5 people showed up.

Back in Juneau, a sense of urgency kicked in. By all accounts, they tore the roof off the place, two nights at the Crystal and one more at the National Guard Armory.

Many accounts of those shows cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

"I remember the attorney general was there a couple of nights," Hobbs said. "That was the nice thing about playing the state capital."

"Everybody was having a hell of a good time in those days, and the band certainly helped," Metcalfe said. "I just remember how ideal they were for the time and the place."

A perfect match: just like cold jalapeño poppers, a third of a pitcher and the gray light of Upper Lynn Canal at 4 in the morning.

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