By Timothy Inklebarger
In Alaska, you have to survive a couple of winters before you’re considered more than just a tourist. I had been living in Juneau a little under a year when I had crossed that threshold.
As a transplant from Austin, Texas, I realized something had changed in me when I got the news that the Juneau Kmart, along with more than 300 others across the nation, was going out of business. “Damn! They have the best produce in town,” I thought. I was told the freshness was due to Kmart flying in their fruits and veggies rather than shipping them up on barges. I experienced genuine anxiety over the closing of a store I wouldn’t have been caught dead shopping at when I was a teenager. What was happening to me? Was I a real Alaskan now?
Posted on February 24, 2006