At age 65, Edna Schneibel felt like she was not only going to survive but that she was really ready to blossom. Her husband, Wayne, had passed away five years earlier, dying on his John Deere tractor, slumping over the steering wheel as if he were falling asleep while Edna watched helplessly from her kitchen window. He left her with no children, a large mortgage and a little insurance that was now exhausted--circumstances that forced Edna to look for work.
Edna dyed her hair dark, dabbed some line-lightener on her country skin, took a deep breath, stood tall before the mirror and wished herself luck. Then she applied, during the course of five exhausting weeks, at over three-dozen places in her little community in western Colorado, a town that seemed almost unfamiliar to her now, so different from the town she and Wayne had done business in for more than four decades.
Finally the manager at the Diamond Shamrock service station at her edge of town told Edna he would be "happy to have her on board." She grinned broadly and said, "Well thanks, Captain, it's nice to be on board." She and Wayne, although they had their own gas tank on the farm, had been here quite a few times over the years. She knew the type of people who stopped here--mostly rural, older, although on weekends there were lots of teenagers as well. She would be working the 4:00 pm to midnight shift.
On those plastic cards the teenagers handed her, she realized most of those nice young women now had names like Jessica, Brittany, Ashley, Megan, and Stephanie and the young men names like Joshua, Justin, Tyler, and Brandon. But many of the young men, and most of the old, had names that had been around forever, like Jim, David, Bill, John, Tom, and Bob. She couldn't remember whether a customer had ever handed her a card with the name Edna. The name Edna always seemed a bit quaint to her, but so had been the beloved Welsh grandmother after whom Edna was named.
Edna loved names. She liked saying them out loud. She liked to thank each customer by name. As in most rural communities, many of her customers were middle-aged or older men, and many were regulars who came in at least once a week. She liked to call them both by their first and last names, but more and more she noticed she preferred to call them by their last names. As they came through the door, Edna found she liked to stand up straight and almost curtsey, and then greet them, "Good evening, Mr. Elliott," "Good evening, Mr. Fitzpatrick," "Good evening, Mr. Samsel."
When she first began doing this, she would make a little mental note, some little detail to help her remember each name. Tom Elliott, who always walked in wearing a worn cowboy hat, became in Emma's mental notes, the son of Wild Bill Elliott, the popular western star of the late 1940s. John Fitzpatrick became a descendant of the famous Irish rebel, Red Fitzpatrick. Some names were more difficult, like David Samsel. But Edna enjoyed challenges, and so David became a descendant of two Biblical heroes: King David of course, but also Samsel, the brother of strong-man Samson, the one who managed to avoid all the dangerous damsels like Delilah. Edna did this with dozens of names.
Everybody, young and old, loved the attention Edna gave them, loved hearing their own names repeated by this rather plain looking but always smiling cashier whose hair was steadily returning back to white.
The older men, mostly farmers and ranchers, particularly loved it. They always stood up a little straighter as they came through the door.
Not many weeks went by before Edna noticed that some of them were dropping in more and more often, although all of them, she believed, had wives at home. She also knew that at age 65 she was no cupcake. She was not going to become a fantasy for any of them. Still, though, they would drop in to have a hot dog or a cup of coffee, to have a bit of old-fashioned courtesy, sometimes to treat her to a coke, although they never called her "Mrs. Schneibel" but simply "Edna."
Mr. Elliott apologized one night for dropping in so often. "Edna," he said, "I just can't stand watching another rerun of that television show "Friends." What he really needed was to see real friends, and Edna was a real friend.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose wife was dying of cancer, told Edna, "It helps me to get out of the house for a while, just a little while."
Mr. Samsel always said, "Edna, my wife is wonderful, and I've got nothing sad to say about my life. I just like to get up and do something for a few minutes in the evening." Edna had discovered through another customer that Mr. Samsel's only son had been killed in a hit-and-run the previous year and that both he and his wife were being treated for severe depression.
As the weeks went by, Edna began to introduce the strangers to each other. Then the evenings, which were usually slow after eight o'clock, began to change. The little gas station on the desert became a place to not only sell gas and milk and soft drinks, it became a place where, because of her presence, something useful was happening. The men began talking with each other, wondering about their lives, and why everything they had been used to had changed so much and so fast. On some nights Edna heard something like, "All I can say is it sure is nice to have some real friends."
Now Edna closed up the station each night, content. She knew her destiny somehow was being fulfilled in helping these lonely men find happiness. Each night when she arrived home she took a shower and then slipped into bed, sleeping soundly and waking to the sun coming through her eastern window. She still missed Wayne now and then but she began to realize at age 65, she was actually the happiest she had ever been in her life.
One night at closing time several familiar cars pulled in at once. Edna saw her regulars walking across the lot toward the door. One of them carried a package. When everyone was inside, Edna opened it and lifted out a lovely pink sweat shirt. It was decorated with hand-painted flowers, and in the center, in large, bold letters, she read:
EDNA
THE DIAMOND SHAMOCK GODDESS.
