Alaskans I have loved, v2

When I was ten my dad traded an old yellow car whose passenger door was held shut with a bungee cord for a years worth of babysitting. The recipient of the car, and our babysitter for the next year, was a rather well known local character. He was a hardworking politician who had been, he told me, sent from the future to save the world. It was a hard position for him, you know. The people from the future had had so much faith in him, but the people here just wouldn’t listen. Unfortunately he never got elected and saved the world. I’m sure he’s still trying.

When he became our babysitter his revolutionary cafe, where entertainment was provided by the hungry and they were compensated in food, had just been shut down. Being an outside-the-box thinker, he took that car and started his own taxi service with a cell phone. Since he spent so much time in the car, he prettied it up with some chickweed and a carrot that he planted in Pepsi cups from the gas station.

When he picked me and my sister up from school we would carefully take the plants out of the seat-belt and squeeze ourselves into the front seat. “Don’t forget your seat-belt! Ninety six percent of people who die in car accidents wouldn’t have died if they were wearing their seat belts.” Ninety six percent was his favorite statistic. Safely seat-belted and packed like sardines, we would settle the plants between our legs.

“How was school?” he would ask, and a lengthy discussion of whatever we had learned that day would ensue. Often he agreed with what we’d learned and expounded on it’s importance or it’s many applications in real life. Other times he disagreed and would explain the reality of Amerikkka, capitalism, socialism, and taxes. Always taxes. Sometimes he’d say, “that carrot’s looking pretty lonely. You’d better tell her a story. But that’d be too boring for you… hey! I have an idea! See if you can tell her a story with all your spelling words in it.” Other times the chickweed would get lonely, and we had to sing romantic old songs to her.

Then the phone would ring and we would go to pick up a tourist. The nature of tourists, especially tourists who come to Alaska and call the taxi from the hand made brochure at the hotel, is that they want to talk. They are lonely and they are looking for the “real” Alaskan experience, not the tour bus version. Our babysitter was happy to oblige.

When we picked up a tourist he would welcome them enthusiastically to the car. Then he would introduce them to my sister and I (authentic Alaskan kids from a remote subsistence trapline which is as Alaskan as it gets, and he’s just babysitting us while our dad looks for a job in town) and to the Carrot and Chickweed. Then he would ask where they were going. Tourists are almost never sure where they’re going. They were thinking about going to this restaurant, or that hiking trail, or maybe an art gallery… but do we know a better one? Where do the real Alaskans go?

This could start a long conversation that would eventually spiral into politics, taxes, and the latest campaign. Or maybe they’d be all over my sister and I and we’d tell them some crazy stories about bears and eighty below, which were all true. Sometimes we were so cute and strange that they would just beg to buy us all lunch so they could keep talking to us. Free food! If none of us liked the tourist of the moment, we would take turn talking to the plants until they were gone. Our babysitter said that plants needed lots of love and attention to survive the presence of Rich Assholes, and our chattering away to the plants had the added benefit of making the tourist go completely silent.

When we weren’t taxi driving, which actually didn’t last that long, we built tree-houses and played with cats and dogs on the land that our babysitter was managing for a friend who was in jail or learned how to belly-dance from his girlfriend. On special days we went to protests, passed out fliers, or gathered signatures. I would always memorize the quotes from the fliers so that in school, when the teacher told me I had to do something I would tell her that Thoreau said disobedience was the true foundation of liberty.

Of course everything ends and eventually his girlfriend rescued a dog that my dad wouldn’t take to the vet. He kicked in her neighbors door and said he would shoot her if the dog weren’t back in the morning. She left the dog with the vet, and we were forbidden from ever speaking to them again.