Looking for Alaska Read Online Free

soup in the summer. I rode through a parking lot and around the corner to two old school buses that were sort of pushed together. Inside the small one was Red. He sold the best hamburgers and fries in town. He’d set up a soda machine outside and kept a few picnic tables for his customers. Everyone said that Seward in the summer and Seward in the winter were two different cities; we would find out, they’d tell us, and watch for our reaction. I had none. I had no idea what an Alaskan winter was like, and I wasn’t quite ready to learn yet. I was still getting my feet wet.
    Leaving Red’s gravel parking lot was a man in a motorized wheelchair. He pulled out onto our main street and headed down the road, out of town, at about five miles an hour. He didn’t drive in the main car lane but just to the side. I was headed to our little bitty movie theater to see which kids we could take to the movie, which we would do once a week all summer, but I turned around and pulled alongside the man in the wheelchair. When he saw me, he pulled farther over so I wouldn’t be nailed by some of the traffic. He said he was headed to Eagle, a grocery store on the edge of town just before the huge metal coffee cup called Espresso Simpatico. A guy named Darien sold Americanos and lattes and all kinds of other fancy coffee there.
    I must have registered surprise on my windburned face because he said, “That’s no big deal. I’ve taken this wheelchair all the way to the Pit Bar.” The Pit Bar stays open until 5 A.M . and opens again a few hours later. It’s a few miles out the road.
    I told him to have a nice ride, he wished me the same. I rode past Terry’s Tire and Lube, a gas station right out of the fifties, where Terry and his wife repair tires and change oil. Before Terry’s on the left was National Bank of Alaska. It had small plots of ground by the side road entrance where people tend little gardens. After we’d been to the bank once, Cheryl, at the far right window, knew our names. She lived about halfway up our hill in an apartment complex. We’d run into Cheryl all over the place, as you do everyone you love, hate, or are indifferent about in a small place like Seward.
    I try not to hate anyone, but there is an occasional person in life that you just don’t want to see, and that is what’s bad about Seward’s post office. I pedaled there before checking into the movie playing at the Liberty Theater. Everyone in Seward has to go to the post office every day to get mail. Eventually you notice who gets their mail at what time of day, and if you want to see a friend or meet someone or avoid someone else, you know when to go. If you hate people in general, you could go to the post office at 3 A.M . If you had a big package, they’d put a key in your box that fit a larger box and keep your big package there. If you love most people and have time to spare, you could hold the front door for people and strike up conversations. Just as long as you didn’t get in the way of the people who hold their eyes straight ahead and are in a hurry to get back to work. Though there aren’t many of these types in Seward.
    I often volunteered to stand in line at the post office to buy some stamps for the family just to check out the platinum blond window clerk. One day I had mailed a package and noticed she wore yellow contacts that made her eyes look like snake eyes. A few days later she wore red ones that made her eyes look like the devil, someone you wouldn’t expect to see working at the post office. The next week she wore purple ones because they matched her sweater, or black ones because she’d ridden her Harley to work and they matched her leathers. I told her I liked the statement she was making; she said thanks, that at least half the people didn’t look her in the eye.
    A few blocks over and down, getting closer all the time to Resurrection Bay, was Liberty