Marion's

In every community I suppose there is a place like Marion's. It is
downtown, on mainstreet I guess you could call it in a small town with
just a few streets that crisscross each other. The front of the place
is painted white, the only place with a porch painted white with
victorian turn of the century gingerbread pattern cutouts decorating
the outside. The four posts that hold up the porch used to be where
horses and buggies were tied up along time ago. There is a single
door and inside there are treasures.

When kids come there are nickel and dime toys on a rack near the door,
you can still find toys for a buck or two hanging on there. The store
is long and narrow with shelves on both sides filled with all the nick
nacks of a five and dime, there are little potteries to decorate the
house, watchbands, harmonicas, a collection of old coke bottles, some
small electrical appliances.


The one thing that is a fixture is the soda fountain, it lines the
wall on the South and has old fashioned round red seats set on metal
posts that twirl round and round when you sit on them. On the counter
there is the old quarter juke box where you can choose the music and
it plays from the Wurlitzer at the end of the counter, the selection
is old country and rock n' roll. You can still order a Coke for dime
served in an old glass Coke cup, and then there is the menu on the
wall. Hamburger, grilled ham and cheese, soup of the day, and many
other quick and esay foods that can be made while you sit and watch.
The soda fountain has all kinds of ice cream, and you can have a
float, a parfait, a chocolate chip sundae, a sasparilla and iron port
are still on the wall for $1.25 a glass. The ice cream cooler is old
fashioned, the kind with square shaped doors you life up and have to
reach into, the same with the ice box, it looks like one of the
original kind where they used to put big blocks of ice, the doors are
oak and glass and it keeps things cool.


Marion came from somewhere way up North, someplace like Norway and set
up this small shop to help her get by after she lost her husband a
long time ago. She and her kids lived upstairs and she raised them
selling ice cream from the 1920's until now. She used to sit on the
end, her white hair and fair skin standing out, her great
grandchildren run the place now. She used to sit there and visit
saying hello to everyone who came in here. It is a meeting ground of
sorts for everyone, because she knew all the families from all around,
from the old folks to the new babies. It didn't matter whether you
were Indian, Mexican, White, Black, Chinese or whatever, you are
treated well there.


I remember going in there when I was small and sitting at the counter
and watching the folks come in, she made her children and workers
there treated everyone with kindness. There was a bar up the street
and many times someone would seek shelter there when it was snowing
and they were cold and a little touched by the spirits. She never
turned anyone away and gave them a bowl of soup and sent them on their
way. When kids got out the movie the parents picked them up there,
they would wait and on the stools and look at all the things hanging
on the wall, everything from change purses to little dolls that danced
on your dashboard, to plastic rings, cheap inexpensive jewelry the
kids would like to wear. Marion is gone now but the store still goes
on.


I wemt in to get a root beer float and sat down at the end and looked
at the selection of 2002 calenders on the wall. I was looking at one
when a young man came in with close cropped hair. His name is Grey
Eyes. His mother is from a place called Smith Lake near Crownpoint
halfway between Shiprock and there. Itis a dry place, he is born for
Tsinijinnie, that is his clan. I know that way back way before most of
us can remember there was group of people, who came through the
mountains of Colorado headed south, they were hunters, gatherers I
suppose who had travelled from the North, they came out of the
mountains near Alamosa Colorado where a high mountain peak rises, it
is called Tsinijinnie, one of the Sacred Mountains for the Navajo
People. One of them travelled onto Smith Lake, an area just West of
Chaco Canyon maybe two or three hundred years ago and made that area
his home, so that is where Greyeyes come from. We share the same birth
some ten generations back so in a way this young man is my nephew.


Hey, he said.


I was surprised to see him as I turned around. He was with a friend of
his, he said they came to get a burger and some fries and were headed
back out to go see some friends. His mother said he was coming home,
she went out to pick up from the airport just the other day, Friday.


He told me, Tell your kids I said, Hey. I looked at him, he is about
20 or so, standing straight and tall, with dark brown eyes and looks
like his mother in a way, but then he is his own man. In this town,
where there are few Indians, he tried out for the basketball team and
was cut from it. I remember he was down hearted about it when I saw
and remember him asking me if it could be because he was Indian. Some
said the coach didn't like Indians, some told him to protest and take
it to the school board. My own boys had all played ball for the local
high school, they worked hard at playing ball and developing their
skills and were able to make the team, each of them. Some played first
string others just sat on the bench but it was something they wanted
and they were able to make the team and play. It wasn't because of
need for a minority, or Indian to fill out the roster, but because
they worked for it and earned the right. I remember telling him that
sometimes it just works out that way, that if you hang around the
practices something could come of it, you have to support the team
whether you make it or not, that is what it is all about really I
guess. After three games one player moved and Grey Eyes got a call to
come back and play. He didn't make an issue of it he just played his
heart out when he got his chance.


He worked at the local grocery store as a carryout boy for groceries,
and always had a good word for anybody that came along. He always made
a point to say hello, how are you doing and always said, Say Hey to
your kids for me. I told him I would. His father is proud of him, he
is a janitor and good silversmith. We usually share a cup of coffee
every once in a while. He told me was going to the airport to pick up
his son. He is coming home on leave, fourty eight hours from Camp
Pendleton, then he is flying out to Uzbekistan, then to someplace in
Afghanistan on Sunday.


I have seen him grow up and coming home he wanted to have that last
hamburger at Marion's, the old soda fountain, to visit a few friends
and spend a little time with this mother, Laurie. I am going to miss
him while he is away, he is just one face among many, a young Marine
going far from home. I am a little worried for him, he is no longer a
child, he is the face of America, going to place to let them know a
little about what we hold dear. That in a small community back in the
states there is a soda fountain where you can sit and people know your
name. His picture is hanging above the cash register. Greyeyes flies
out tomorrow, he smiled at me and said to say, Hey there. So I am
passing this along to you.


rustywire