Cafeteria cashier shares stories of life, love and travel:
By: BRI HEANEY NEWS EDITOR:
A white plastic foam box filled with food from the hot bar slides along a metal rail, pushed by a student waiting to check out. Upon instruction, the student places it on a scale and is given a price by the cashier Marsha Dust.
Marsha is seated in a swivel chair which, on its highest setting, barely puts her at eye level with the cash register. The student pays and gets one last instruction as he gathers his things; to have a good day. The lunch rush has just ended, according to Dust.
With her arms crossed she leans back, presses her lips together, and her cerulean eyes began searching the default screen of the computerized cash register. After sitting in silence for a couple seconds, she tilts her head back, shaking some wispy blond strands away from her face, and smirks.
“There is some stuff you might not want to know about me,” says Dust. The freckles on her nose bunch up as her whole face tightens around a smile. Her Co-worker shakes his head knowingly and giggles to himself.
Dust has made a life for herself here in the Midwest where she was born and raised, where her two daughters where born and raised, and where her grandchildren have done the same. “I’m a Midwesterner,” says Dust. However, she doesn’t believe that her personality has ever really rung true to the Midwestern stereotype.
“I should have been from elsewhere,” said Dust. “New York.” Regional differences are something about which Dust knows a thing or two. Despite her steady life in the Midwest she has seen more of the United States than most, she says. Her husband was a truck driver, and she traveled with him frequently.
“Traveling the country with my husband was pretty cool, it’s how I’ve seen a lot of what I’ve seen,” said Dust. “New York was just how you would expect, people hollering out the windows,” said Dust. On that same trip while they were in New Jersey, their truck was literally “ripped off.” “They ripped the whole back door off of it,” said Dust, who shrugged and then began to chuckle, “It was bad cheese. Let ‘em have it. They surely got sick.”
Prior to traveling with her husband across the country, as a young woman, she set out to move to California. It was her idea to choose a route that would cut through Las Vegas, Nevada. “Just so I could gamble, even though I wasn’t old enough,” said Dust with a shrug. They did just that. Dust says that the slot machines where everywhere in Vegas, from restaurants to restrooms.
“At a diner, I put money into it [slot machine] and a guy screamed at me, “Are you old enough?” Dust told the man, “Well, no. I’m not old enough. What do you got it here for? You don’t have a guard next to it. Yeah, I’m gonna play it!” “I bet if I would have won money though, he would have taken it,” she said.
Another student, a customer, walks toward her with a tray in hand, already chewing the food from the hot bar. Dust’s laughter trails off as she brings in her gesturing hands, and leans the chair forward to an upright position. Her crooked smile is still there as she goes through the motions on the touch screen and opens the cash drawer.
“It’s double the price if you eat it before you pay,” says Dust as she winks at the patron, handing him back a few dollars and change.
