The Artworks Art & Frame Shop was home to some great figures from the contemporary art scene.  Painters like Terry Redlin, Fred Machentanz, Terry Isaac were represented along side local artists Bill Baron, Nadine Kranz and the shop’s owner Ardell Mehlhoff.  Quite a character Ardell was.  If a person could epitomize the store Forever XXI, it would be Ardell.  Rather than ever admit her age, Ardell stuffed herself into size 5 jeans, home-dyed her hair and caked her wrinkles with makeup.  She lived in a trailer house, coolly located on the unfashionable side of the river, and she partied ‘til dawn with men half her age.  That is, until she met one of this generation’s prestigious, Bismarck, North Dakota, family members.  The Watchers had their name on a junior high school, a street and a new-fangled, public swimming pool that, for fifteen minutes out of each hour, made waves just like the ocean.  The Watcher family is found in the annals of Bismarck’s history as one of the founding fathers.  Jeff had Ardell listening to classical music and attending catwalk fashion shows in Arizona.  I had to chuckle.  Yes, The Artworks was full of colors and character.

No offense to Ardell, about whom I could write a book, but my favorite character, without a doubt, was Martin Henlein.  Although he was my grandfather’s age, which is ancient to any nineteen-year-old, Martin touched my soul.  Without Martin in my early life, I would be a different person today.

Martin was a quiet man who talked a lot.  He talked to me anyway, in his soft, aged, raspy voice.  Reminding me of Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, with his white hair, goatee, eyeglasses and thin face, Martin differed from the fast food magnate in that family did not surround Martin.  The only relative Martin ever mentioned was a nephew.  Never married, Martin had neither children, nor grandchildren, to brighten his retirement.  No fond memories of the love given by a special life partner could console him in these last years. 

So, Martin spent his time at The Artworks.  He pored through the poster catalogue books as if they were brand new to him, each time he visited.  Gradually he grew to trust me.  Maybe it was because I reminded him of someone.  He began to talk to me.  First he would talk about his favorite artist, Stobbart, who lured him into The Artworks to look at miniature images of giant, three-masted sailing ships from the days of old.  As his comfort level rose, Martin told me many stories.  One tale I remember distinctly involved a particularly serious, late spring blizzard that covered the railroad tracks so heavily that the train, which carried Bismarck’s mail, could not reach the city.  For three weeks, citizens of Bismarck, situated on flat, treeless land, watched the distant plumes of steam puffing into cool air.   Knowing the train was nearby, but stuck by the forces of nature, that will outwit humans every time, the hearty Dakotans contented themselves with the situation and waited ‘til the snow melted. 

My friend had a grand appreciation for the art of drafting, which explains his fascination with renderings of great ships and machines from cameras to car engines.  Quality of workmanship was the only criteria by which to measure beauty.  Martin’s fondness for the arts and beauty included also tropical flowers, which he miraculously grew in his greenhouse, the photographs of which he share with me; and classical music, the albums of which he shared with the neighborhood children; and of course, the cinema.  For Martin, there was no greater movie ever made than “Gone with the Wind.” 

One day, Martin entered the shop, and instead of sitting at the catalogue table, he sidled up to the register counter and told me he had figured it out.  Every time he came to the gallery, he thought I looked very familiar to him.  I thought it was because, as we discovered through our conversations and friendship, that he had lived near my great-grandparents, and thus had known my mother as a child who visited her grandparents, but Martin insisted that was not the feeling of familiarity he was experiencing.  There was something more.  Then he realized that each time he returned home after going to The Artworks, he was compelled to get out his coffee table book on the making of “GWTW.”  I reminded him of Vivian Leigh as Scarlet O’Hara.  Quite a compliment, but I worried more about his eyesight. 

Everyone knows that as a person ages, his eyesight worsens, and to me Martin was very old.  How could he see?  Especially through those dirty glasses?  I often wished I could whip the eyeglasses off Martin’s face and wash the smudges and flakes of dead skin off the lenses, but that would have been disrespectful.  Every good North Dakota girl learned to respect her elders.  But, the man drove his own car!  It was a huge Lincoln, pearly white, with a black top.  He always looked angry behind the wheel of that giant boat.  I suppose he was only squinting.  Whenever I saw Martin outside of the gallery, he often looked sad, or angry.  Evidently, he didn’t have other young friends, like me, who relished his stories and shared his loves of beauty and art.  He must have been so lonely.

My mother told me of how Martin was always kind to her, when she was a child, and he even gave her a collection of classical albums.  She remembered him fondly from those early years.  But, once Mother reached puberty, Grandma forbade her to visit with Martin.  I suspect this may have happened to Martin quite often in such a small, closed-minded and therefore suspicious, city as Bismarck, North Dakota.

There was a neighbor lady of Martin’s who showed him kindness.  One day Martin entered the gallery boasting a hand-knitted, hunter’s orange scarf around his neck.  He was beaming.  I commented on the new scarf.  It was hard to not notice the thing.  Martin proudly announced that his neighbor told him she wanted to knit a scarf for him and asked him what color he wanted.  He requested orange so that it would be easy to find.  Again with the eyesight.  He could worry me so. 

Even though I worried about this old man, living alone, driving him and shoveling his own sidewalk during North Dakota’s treacherous winters, I treasured Martin.  When others commended me on my patience, a virtue that, I swear, escaped my character when I was born, in “putting up” with Martin’s lingering conversations, I pitied their short sightedness.  Martin helped me to see so many beauties I may have never appreciated were it not for his own enthusiasm.  His love of “GWTW” however was his own.  I cheer when I see Tara destroyed and Atlanta burned out.  Serves them right.  Even so, Martin collected “GWTW” plates with images taken from the movie.  When he needed money, he would sell the ones he felt were not up to his standard of art and beauty.  “Her upper arm is too thin on this plate.”  But, there were two plates with which he told me he would never part, “Except,” he winked at me, “I think they would make a wonderful wedding present for someone.”  I, like Martin, haven’t married, and now Martin has left this world.  What Martin’s nephew did with those plates, I will never know.  I don’t need them to remember my special man.  Instead, I have great tales, an appreciation for history and a respect for quality in beautiful things, all of which I got from knowing Martin.

Martin has been gone for a long time now.  I have moved away from Bismarck, but I often think of him.  He gave me a wallet-size photo of himself.  “I sneaked in between the babies at J.C. Penney’s,” he told me.  Remembering the lessons Martin taught me, the photo is professionally framed, using high quality engineering and beauty.  My own hands, out of great respect for a special man, did this.  Bless Martin Henlein.