'I just enjoy coming to work'

COEUR d'ALENE - As Minnie McDonald wound through the maze of shelves lined with dishes and shoes, she paused every few steps to catch someone's eye.

"Hi there Darryl!" she called to an elderly man at her first stop. Then a few paces further, to a young man by the clothing racks, "How are you? How's your wife? Tell her hello."

You get to know a lot of people, Minnie explained, before taking her usual position behind the counter at the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store.

"Not a lot of names, but faces," she said.

She has come to know their stories, too, at least from those in the mood to talk when they shop, or those who simply can't hold in their troubles anymore.

And she has learned to recognize when folks don't need to say anything at all, when she can tell by their dark countenance, their silence and their weighty expressions, that the thrift store is what's allowing them to get by.

"You can tell by looking at them, they don't have any money," she said. "Sometimes I work with them, if (the item) isn't anything big."

There are a lot of hard times Minnie has seen, and even gone through herself, working four decades at the SVDP thrift store on Government Way and Walnut Avenue.

Her 40-year anniversary of clocking in at the store, some years up front at the counter, sometimes working with dishware or books or anything else that needed doing, will be official in April, she said.

"I just enjoy working," the 86-year-old said with a laugh, acknowledging that she still works full time. "Of course the money helps, too."

Mostly she just enjoys the people, she said. Greeting those who have shopped there for years, helping folks down on their luck find items they need.

"That's my outing," she said of face time with customers.

Not to call her idle or chatty. Her slender, 5-foot-5 frame somehow stood tall behind the checkout counter on Wednesday, confident and prepared for the line snaking through the store.

She was unphased by the heaps of items laid on the counter to tally and wrap and bag, all second nature to her by now.

"No complaints. She does her job, and does it well," remarked coworker Karen Everson. "And all these young girls come in, 30 years old, and start saying, 'I'm tired.' She runs circles around us."

Some customers tell Minnie about their hardships, Minnie said, about losing jobs or worse. The harried setting of the checkout line doesn't allow for much consoling, she said, so usually she responds by reaching across and simply placing her hand on theirs.

"I'll say some prayers," she said. "I treat them like I'd like to be treated on the other side of the counter."

Otherwise she chats up each customer the same way, merrily, with a wide and genuine smile, as her fingers work overtime on the cash register.

"She's an asset here," remarked Joan Little, who has shopped at the store for 30 years and heard Minnie greet her by name throughout. "She knows most everybody's name. She just has a lot of rapport with people."

Some shoppers have known Minnie since they were their children's ages, Everson said.

"People come in with their grandkids and say, 'I came in when I was this tall, and Minnie was here,'" she said. "She's served about four generations."

The work sustains her, Minnie said. Her legs don't bother her after standing before the checkout line for 8 hours, and the Coeur d'Alene woman is used to rousing herself at 5:30 a.m. to make the early shift.

"People say, how do you do it? But I'm just real blessed," she said. "I just enjoy coming to work, and all the people I work with."

Up until eight years ago, she worked two jobs for 32 years, at the thrift store and as a nurse's aide at Kootenai Medical Center.

That meant working seven days a week, balancing the two shifts the best she could.

"I just had a lot of energy," she said, adding that she still found time to garden in between. "I was glad to keep on working."

But she was raised with respect for what hard work could produce. She remembers her mother raising Minnie and her eight siblings through the Great Depression in Ekalaka, Mont. Everyone pitched in, she said, with cooking, canning, sewing.

"Always working," she said.

Minnie also learned independence working as a telegraph operator for the Milwaukee Railroad during World War II, she said, after she graduated high school. She and other young women manned depots in small towns across Montana, she said.

They received train orders via telegraph that they hung by the tracks, sometimes at night at their own peril, that workers on trains nabbed with hooks as the machines blasted through.

"It was exciting," she said. "I had always been scared of the dark, and the first time I went out on a job, I had to go out alone on this dark track."

Her late husband, Jacob Aaron McDonald, was a hard worker, too, a miner in Kellogg until he developed lung cancer. Minnie worked to help sustain themselves and their children, Deborah Lynn, John Aaron and James Arthur.

She settled into two jobs because they both suited her, she said. She could work with appreciative people, patients at one job, and shoppers at the other.

"I just enjoy helping people," Minnie said. "It's nice to see them get what they need."

That's why she has no plans of retiring from the thrift store anytime soon.

Not when there are still long lines waiting to be served, and folks with burdens to unload to a patient listener.

And not while she still has energy left.

"I always say work doesn't hurt anybody," she said. "It's good for you to work, it really is. But you've got to enjoy it, too."