LINDSBORG – At the post office the other day a woman from years ago greeted me by name, and I struggled not to draw a blank. It happens. The years rush on and before we know it we’re forgetting names, even ones that go with a pretty face.
After a frenetic millisecond, I remembered. “Hello, Candles,” I said. We spoke for a moment. On her way out, she said, “Nobody has called me ‘Candles’ in a long time.”
It was a name I had for Marjie Anderson some time ago, when she and her mother, Sue Benbow, had the store downtown. In 2002, they opened a lively and colorful place called “The Butcher, The Baker and the Candlestick Maker” at 130 N. Main (now Fuqua Insurance). High on their storefront was a locally-created sign the size of an interstate billboard, one of downtown’s most vivid markers. It danced with caricatures of a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker.
The store offered meats from local farms (butcher); a long line of cakes, pies, cookies and other goodies from Benbow’s oven at the back (baker); and many kinds and sizes of Marjie’s hand-crafted candles (candlestick maker). And the store sold a variety of accessories, trinkets, cards, preserves, mixes, and numerous gift items.
A small restaurant at center stage offered homemade soups and sandwiches.
When Benbow sold out of her exquisite chicken salad, it was a cause for great mourning; when supplies for BLTs went dry, another bleak day. The pasta and potato salads were superb; get them both, the wise advised, to avoid the trauma of indecision. Better be early, went the rule, lest you be forced to settle for, say, the three-cheese grill on thick slabs of marble bread.
The BBC, as it was known, was one of those rare and radiant components of downtown life in a small community. People – regulars, browsers, first-timers –found it an inviting, comfortable place. Asking, say, six people why they liked the BBC was to invite six different answers – or more: The sandwiches, the potions, the jams and jellies, the meats, all the baked things, the salads and soups, and the candles. Especially the candles. Marjie once made herds of them in the shape of dala horses. Soaps, too, and they were a Christmas special.
Proprietors of glorious establishments need stamina and perseverance, and Marjie and Sue had battled significant health issues. In December, 2011, they announced that their store would close at the end of the year.
Well-masked at the post office, I was reminded in an instant that Candles and her mother each had a smile that was all eyes. The rest was all warmth and heart. A lot of people came to BBC for that.
When people entered, no one had to say “welcome.” They knew they were, before a word was spoken, long before door closed behind them.
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Our season of light
At this time of year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold, at least so far. The days are short as a dream. The sun begins to lose its strength early in the afternoon and before we know it, it’s time to knock off and head for the car in a dark lot. Mornings, our hand crawls up the wall, a spider in search of a light switch.
This year brings a covid darkness, menacing. The antidote is Christmas, a season of light that brings out the child in us – or, rather, the childhood in us. Now come the brief sweet moments when common things are again uncommon, when our senses are keen with promise and hope.
The season unrolls, a scroll of blessed events. Wherever we look there is color, the enchantment in a single star, or the light of a silver moon. The most common pots are full of treasure, all lights are beacons, every sound a chorus. The smallest homes, beaming with joy.
Covid cannot match miracles that come quietly, creeping into the human heart without the herald of trumpets, filling us with their wonder and glory; the most miraculous of miracles are often those at our own fireside, or just outside the door, or across the table, or in the next room.
Wherever we look we see something that advertises the future or embraces the past. The view from the living room, or the office, is the same as it has been for years but at this time of year, it can be shatteringly beautiful, as in a new appreciation of life, of the world around us. In spite of darkness, Christmas brings thoughts of a new affirmation in living, and of all that living can bring.
