KAIBETO, Ariz. — This is a story about a store that’s not a story about a store.
It’s a story about toilet paper. And something greater than toilet paper.
It’s a story about wedding invitations on a wall, about fading photographs of people long gone. It’s a story about a place where you have to keep 12 packs of soda cold because your customers might not have electricity.
This is a story about a warm place on a lonely, windswept roadside.
Before we get to the toilet paper, let’s get to the people who bought all that toilet paper: Stanley Patterson and his daughter, Lisa Harris.
'Because of them, my kids were fed, we had a good life'
Patterson and Harris run the Kaibeto Market, which is 36 miles from Page but in a whole different world, isolated on the Navajo Nation. But COVID was there in 2020 and the Walmart in Page was running out of toilet paper.
The Kaibeto Market never did.
Because they couldn’t — running out of toilet paper in early COVID meant failing the community. And Patterson and Harris couldn’t do that.
They have a reputation, even with the Navajo in other communities far away.
“They tell the people who live here ‘You are very lucky to have this,’” Patterson said.
Customers from Page don’t usually shop here and neither do tourists passing by on State Route 98. The Kaibeto Market is easy to miss. You can’t see the 10,000 square-foot orange building from the highway — the only clue of its existence are two blue generic highway signs depicting a fork, knife, and gas pump.
But for those people living in the rugged country around Kaibeto, the store is so much more than that. It’s the place to get ground beef, bananas and a sense of community — without driving 40 minutes each way to Page.
The town and the store take care of each other.
“Because of them, my kids were fed, we had a good life,” Patterson said pointing to the dozens of photographs he has of long-time customers. “I started taking pictures of them so that we would have a remembrance because I love them and most of them are gone.”
Signs of community
When the Kaibeto Market opened in 1987, it replaced the original store down the hill which had been there since 1909. Patterson worked for the previous owner before he bought out his boss in 1990. In 2007 Patterson passed the keys on to his daughter.
Harris was 27 years old with three kids at the time.
“It is a very big ball and chain,” Harris said. “You are choosing to run a store on a reservation.”
The store changed hands, but not traditions. Many elderly customers have interest-free charge accounts and pay once a month.
“Some of these people have been on this charge account before my dad bought it,” Harris said.
Twelve packs of soda are kept refrigerated since not all customers have electricity to keep them cool.
Loitering is acceptable. In fact, it is encouraged. The store has become somewhat of a senior center. There is a bench inside for elderly Navajo to sit and share stories. Really, there’s not much else to do in Kaibeto.
Shoplifting, while rare, still happens. Harris said if a teenager steals an energy drink, she won’t call the police, but she will call their mom or grandmother.
That in itself is a sign of community.
“Every community has its people that are hurting and can’t afford things and it’s hard,” Harris said. “I think it’s even harder because we know the families."
No plans to change
Harris could easily charge more for the convenience her market provides but the desert grocery store is surprisingly reasonable.
A bundle of green onions is 59 cents. Iceberg lettuce heads are $2.09. A pound of bacon is $3.99 and ribeye steaks were on sale for $12.99 per pound.
“We are very competitive, in fact, our meat prices are cheaper than Walmart’s in Page,” Patterson said. “We buy and cut it ourselves and we can do things with that.”
Even though he no longer owns the store, Patterson is still a fixture and helps his daughter, especially when things break down. Reach-in coolers from the early 80s do, and spare parts are not always easy to get but Harris said the old coolers are still more reliable than the ones manufactured today.
If there is one thing her father taught her, it is that you must hustle and build relationships with suppliers. Harris’ office wall is covered in wedding invitations, Christmas cards and graduation photos.
She has no plans to change how this small desert store operates and does not know who will take over once she is ready to retire.
“We have a bunch of young kids here and I kind of see, maybe one of them will want to be like ‘Hey I want to stay here, can you teach me?’”
Her own children have a third-generation itch to leave Kaibeto.
“It is hard because you are isolated,” Patterson said. “You are far from everything.”
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