The Beer Tree
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In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s a wave of newcomers arrived on the Salmon River. Reactions of local Indians, loggers and miners were varied. Indians joked that the hippies provided relief from the run-of-the-mill locals and were the first people lower on the totem pole than themselves since the Chinese left. A matriarch of the River took to them as interesting, literate and good for the country. Forks of Salmon came to be the community center for many these newcomers. Like the two other towns of the area, it consisted of a single store, and in this case, the country's smallest Post Office. Despite these limitations of size, Forks was a going concern and on any given day a variety of acts were likely to be played out in the public arena that the hippies were now a part of. It was a warm, early October afternoon when the expensive motor home pulled to a stop in front of the store. A heavy set man in a beige leisure suit got out stretching stiffly and ritually brushed off the front of his pants. Looking around he took in the single other vehicle in sight in the apparently deserted settlement, a dusty pickup with a sticker above the camper door reading; "I will give up my guns when they pry them from my cold dead fingers." Another illustrated with a pair of skinny shanks protruding from a hole in the ground was labeled, "Help the Forest -- plant a Sierra Clubber." The man watched disinterestedly as a mixed herd, a temporary association of a dozen horses, three sheep and a burro meandered up the road to lounge in the shade near the store. The burro drank from a moving sprinkler by gripping the head with a set of long yellowed teeth. "You ain't so dumb," the onlooker thought idly to himself. "But what kind of human would live in a place like this?" Realizing that no attendant was forthcoming, he pumped his own gas. Spotting a not yet yellowed clipping on the store's community bulletin board announcing the presence of a second fleet of Russian subs in the Mississippi River he thought, "A bunch of hayseeds, haywire yokels." The jangle of a bell over the door of reinforced this conviction as he stood surveying the cool, dark interior of the building. He took a carton of beer from the cooler and strode to the counter where Ted Schneiderman, a retired miner, kept store on Tuesdays. "How much for that old phone," the man asked brusquely, nodding to a high shelf running the circumference of the room. On it sat a dusty collection of miner's picks, pans, drills, glass ware, teamsters equipment, a plaster cast of what appeared to be a giant human footprint, and the old crank phone. "It ain't for sale, friend," Ted observed noncommittally. For the first time the man looked closely and was somehow encouraged by the laconic figure in a faded khaki tee shirt. "Everything's for sale," he asserted powerfully. "How much?" He slapped two twenty-dollar bills on the counter, adding a third as if revealing a lush stud hand. Ted cocked an eyebrow in what the man took for recognition of superior resources and means. "You may be right mister," he responded, reaching into a pocket. "But you got to make it worth my time. Time's valuable in these parts you know," he added dryly, producing a half-dollar. "I'll flip you for that phone,...five hundred dollars on the line. If you win you get the phone for free; if I win I get your five hundred and you can have the beer." Ted watched with unrevealed pleasure as the shock of this proposition registered on the man's face and spoke again a fraction of a second before he could be answered. "If you loose sport, I'll even flip you double or nothing. Why that ain't but a thousand bucks, nothing for a man like yourself. And all you got to do is win one time and that phone's yours," he continued in a voice of mock encouragement. "You must be crazy," the outraged shopper shouted finally. "I'm not gambling five hundred dollars for that piece of junk." "That's what I figured," Ted responded, looking the man over pointedly. "You still want to pay for that beer, friend?" |