© Copyright 2004 by Lin Stone
The shop I love most in Mena Arkansas is owned by Mike and
Kathy Gallaway. They just moved here from California. The shop is found
right across the street from the old train depot in the middle of town. This is a Southwest
Antiques & gifts store with hardly a thing there that the couple can't bring
up a story about.
Mike was hanging up a full sized steer hide outside as I came up the first time. The imitation Indian rugs and woven baskets drew me farther inside. Now, I say imitation because they came from Mexico instead of the United States. I have never felt like we were related to the Indians south of the border. There is a precedent for that; Cochise never felt related to them either.
"We looked for years to find our wooden Indian," Mike explained as I stopped in front of it. The Indian looked so real I had stopped to talk with it.
I remembered having the privilege of snapping the picture of a young girl seeing her first "live" Indian, an exact duplicate of this one. Her mouth had dropped open and her eyes grew white as she struggled to resolve the question was he alive, or was it dead?
There was a second hide hanging on the wall inside. This one was a huge circle. It was almost big enough to cover my living room floor, and pretty enough I would have been proud for people to see it there. There were over two dozen framed pictures that would have stayed on my walls too, mostly western scenes, but also just plain beautiful sunsets.
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You'll feel that real, old time atmosphere inside the store. Boots and Barbed wire seem to go together.
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Lin Stone writes travel stories for
Your Vacation World, insurance articles for
American
Insurance Depot and helps other writers learn to write by supplying
articles to Tale Wins. Seven of his
books have been published by Browzer
Books.
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