The Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington • 21

.7 The Spokesman Review thursday, jan. 20, 1983 page 21 jfi Lr i An old church, moved to Marlin in 1950, is City Hall. Inside, 25-year-old Mayor Tracy Lesser (fourth from left) meets with Council members (from Jim Friend, A1 Kramer, Henry Kallenberger, Dan Janke Edna Lentz. 77ie streets are safe, folks are friendly and life is slow in the state fs smallest town rARLIN, Wash. A school teacher from the East once Ldescribed this tiny town as a Photographs by Jim Shelton cemetery with street lights.

After living here a year, she fled. Marlin residents still remember the woman and chuckle over her description of the town, for its true: Things are pretty slow here. But thats the beauty and the curse of this place. To some, the town embodies the virtues of a thousand small communities spilled across America: The streets are safe, the people are friendly and the days pass tranquillv. To others, though, Marlin looks like a town in rigor mortis, a community in the last throes before extinction.

fc 'j, i F. -Vi 1 H1' tv I I i 'I Vv 1 A if v' 1 1 a 1 main street is Jim Friend. A iL. at the age of 23, he ran unopposed for mayor before Marlins 30 registered voters. Now, at 25, he still is a good 30 or 40 years younger than all the other council members.

But they wait for him to call the meeting to order. After City Clerk Jim Friend reads the last meetings minutes, the council gets down to business: City hall needs painting and the community hall needs new doors. Whats to be done? Like nearly every other community across the country, Marlin must balance its needs against its revenues. Captital improvements must be chosen carefully when the annual budget is only $19,000. Some things, though, can be accomplished easily in a small town without pulling purse strings or cutting red tape.

When the council discusses a local dog that has been harassing citizens, a councilman provides the easiest solution: Pick up a rock and the cowardly beast turns tail and runs. Its such simplicity of life that sets Marlin off from cities many times its size. Its such simplicity that inspires many of the town's residents. I dont know any other place I want to live, says Marie Lesser, the mayors mother. Its green in the valley in the spring and its nice and quiet and theres no crime.

I like it here a hundred miles from anywhere. Her husband, Harold, has been heard to say that if Marlin had a traffic light, youd know town was getting too big. There are no traffic lights and not many cars stop in town. Its been nine years since the last house was built in Marlin and those who grow up here often move on. Even a long-time resident like Bob Engle, a councilman and former mayor, says he hopes to retire elsewhere in another year.

We used to have pinochle parties at the Rec Hall, says councilman Kallenberger, but, God, there aint anything to do anymore. If life is slower in Marlin than in other places, it is also more peronal. A farmer working on a fence line waves at me when I pull into town, even though he doesnt know me. When someone falls ill, word gets out quickly. And from time to time a goodwill box appears in the store and customers donate food to it.

Their gifts are then given anonymously and no one feels beholden. But how many times can a small grocery store afford to extend credit? How many times can the young leave a 400 local customers who pay 60 cents a quart and a hefty $20 deposit for six bottles. Edelmann, 32, worked full time as a vocational rehabilitation counselor before last summer, when he bought out an elderly Pittsburgh brother and sister who had been bottling seltzer as a sideline to their soft-drink distribution business. He estimates he has invested about $30,000 into his one-man venture, dubbed Pittsburgh Seltzer Works. Oh yes, theres money to be made in seltzer, he says.

The sale included about 6,000 old seltzer City left) and Cast out upon the scablands of Grant County, Marlin is the state of Washingtons smallest incorporated city, home to a declining population of 70 people. From downtown Marlin on Saturday night you can often hear coyotes calling in the distance. They are joined by the choral sounds of owls and bullfrogs and crickets. Its a quiet place, says Henry Kallenberger, who has lived in town for 76 years. dont do any swinging here, admits his wife, Grace.

For many years the town of Hatton in Adams County held claim to being Washingtons smallest incorporated city. But last spring, when each towns clerk counted heads in the annual census, Hatton had grown, its population rising from 80 to 85, and Marlin had shrunk, its population dropping from 85 to 70. Another thing you ought to know is that Marlin is not really named Marlin. The town was incorporated in 1911 as the town of Krupp and that remains its legal name. But during World War people looked distrustfully at an American town bearing the same name as Germanys famous Krupp munitions company.

So the name was unofficially changed to Marlin, commemorating Henry Marlin, the areas first settler. On the map the name is Krupp but in conversation its Marlin. Walk outside the Marlin Post Office or Grocery and youll see the Krupp Union Grain Co-op one block away. Nothing is more than a block or two away in Marlin. The city has only 10 streets, most of which run three blocks or less.

If you venture far off Urquhart Avenue, the towns main street, youll hit gravel roads before you can count the number of houses in town. There are only 27 and three of them are vacant. Do you know that many of the people in Moses Lake (only 30 miles southwest) dont know where Marlin is? asks Edna Lentz, a life-long resident of town. Those people in Moses Lake arent alone. Marlin is hidden out upon the scablands, cast down in the Crab Creek Valley, a coulee cut by glacial flood waters that exposed a landscape of black volcanic rocks and shallow soils now overgrown with sagebrush and bunch grass.

The town itself is huddled around the grain elevators of the Krupp farmers coop. Down the street are the post office, grocery and tavern. The tavern is closed this winter. Heating costs apparently exceed bar receipts. City Hall is an old paint-peeled Baptist Church.

In 1950, the town bought it for a pittance and then moved the building from its original site, 12 miles outside Marlin. City councilman Henry Kallenberger parks a Sears Craftsman tractor mower inside the church when hes not cutting the lawn outside Marlin's community center, which is the towns abandoned schoolhouse. Marlin children now go to school in neighboring Wilson Creek. When the council meets on the second Monday of every month, the members gather around a large rectangular table just a few yards from the tractor. If any citizens are in attendance, they sit in church pews.

This evening the meeting gets started a little late. Ive kept the mayor talking at dinner. Tracy Lesser is quite likely the youngest mayor in Washington. In 1981, Remember A A -s "Fi 1 4 Taking a stroll down Marlins those tiny touch your tongue really. The bubbles keep the water dancing above your tongue.

Some people like it because it makes them burp. I enjoy a good, friendly seltzer fight once in a while. Seltzer water injected with carbon dioxide and bottled under high pressure to lock in the bubbly was the rage of earlier decades when it seemed everyone was squirting dancing water into their glasses and the smallest American town had its own seltzer bottler. Eastern European Jews, Italians, Czechs, the Irish and the English also Pat Friend, manager of Marlins only grocery store, keeps an eye out for customers. town before its population dwindles to nothing? Im going to live here and Ill do whatever I can for there to be a future to the town, says mayor Lesser.

He and his wife, Kitty, are among those enchanted by the coyotes calling at midnight, by the choral sounds of owls and bullfrogs and crickets. Theyve also been lucky. Tracys family owns a large wheat farm in the area and Kitty doesnt mind commuting each day to work in Moses Lake. There arent many others in Marlin like them, young, employed, looking at a future as bright as the rising sun. As I left Marlin late in the evening, I wondered how long those less fortunate would be content to listen to the coyotes calling.

bottles and stainless steel nozzles dating from the early 1900s. The -inch-thick glass bottles, which hold from 28 to 38 ounces of liquid, feature etched labels of original seltzer distributors from scores of Eastern and Midwestern cities. Several dozen bottles were made for Pittsburghs William Penn Hotel, one of Edelmanns best customers todav. Edelmann says several hotel executives like to use seltzer in bottles with their hotels name inscribed. But they cant have their bottles because I own them, Edelmann bubbles.

bubbles that tickled your tongue? By PETER MATTIACE Associated Press PITTSBURGH Sam Edelmann thrills over tiny, tiny bubbles tingling the tongue and tickling the throat. Edelmann is one of Americas last independent seltzer men, a rare purveyor of old-fashioned carbonated water for those purists seeking cold drinks, lively fruit juices, real whisky spritzers or simply the original no-calorie soda pop. I love seltzer. Its a good, clean drink, Edelmann says. Good seltzer doesnt enjoyed seltzer water.

But the popularity of old-fashioned seltzer fizzed out after World War II with the mass bottling of sweet soft drinks. Today, many remember seltzer water simply as comedy props for the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges or Clarabell on televisions Howdy Doody. But others, turned off by the high price of sparkling water and the salt in club soda, are rediscovering seltzer as a refreshing soft drink. Edelmann packs his seltzer bottles in wooden boxes and delivers weekly to about I.