She Likes to Watch

Today, Tribune blogger Pat Pemberton and I pay tribute to a former Central Coast resident.

Born in Stockton, Marcus Fuhrman attended Cuesta College and Cal Poly in the late 1960s and was stationed at Camp San Luis Obispo through the mid-‘70s. He later became a high school English teacher.

Fuhrman died April 29 in a small town outside of Page, Ariz. He was 59.

This afternoon, family and friends are holding a celebration of his life at Shoshone Point, on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

Tribune staffer Jay Thompson became friends with Fuhrman in 1981 while the two were working as waiters at the Moqui Lodge, a 135-room resort near the southernmost border of Grand Canyon National Park.

Known jokingly as “The Last Resort,” Moqui was established in the late 1920s

Moqui became a landmark in the mid-1960s due to its glass-fronted A-frame. The resort was demolished in November 2005.

As Jay shared, “Serving the public can be tough. Some nights, it’s a job just to survive. Maybe it’s like going to war where your fellow waiters cover your back.”

Here are a few of Marcus Fuhrman’s thoughts on life at Moqui Lodge, told to Jay in 2006:

On living at Moqui:

We moved there from Death Valley in 1981 to ’85. We had an Airstream trailer we later sold to Billy Two-Beers and bought a doublewide in Tusayan. We borrowed Dave Miller’s Dodge and dragged it to the Moqui on a Sunday so the sheriff wouldn’t be around. We were probably the first doublewide. We were the only ones with kids back then.

On the “sweet mix”:

I’ve been in some pretty cool times and places with people, with different activities, situations and different types of social groups … and Moqui … it was just a sweet mix. It was a little bit on the outside of the company’s strong thumb, so we were a little loosey-goosey out there. It might have been the altitude, I don’t know.

On the people:

It was a little bit Looney Tunes. (Moqui) was a little campground for crazy people who didn’t fit traditional careers. There were some odd people who could survive there and have some sense of a normal life even though no one was normal.

On the dining room:

It was so fun, man. It was the craziest dining room. I liked going to work because you didn’t know what the hell was going to happen. One night a big old lady on a German tour fell down and had a heart attack. Somebody else lost their whole tray of food … like six plates. Some doofus who didn’t know how to set his tray. They pulled from the wrong side and it was unbalanced and the whole thing slipped over. It was so funny.

On the challenges of waiting tables:

I liked waiting tables because it demanded so much of me — quickness and memory and anticipation and planning and speed and accuracy. But customers could very easily make me feel subservient. It didn’t take much — a look, a word, an attitude or a kind of brush-off.

Maybe one out of 20 tables I’d get that sense. But the other 19 it was like a challenge: Go get them, bust them, dominate them with dialogue or interest — draw them out and find out who they are.

The coolest part of living at Moqui:

It was when we closed after New Year’s. They had a big New Year’s party. Everybody worked and then we hung out. The next day we would watch whatever game was on New Year’s Day … And then two months of quiet.

On the magic of Moqui:

I don’t know when I learned it, but I learned a long time ago for me my time does not belong to somebody else. And the time I get on this planet I just want it to be full of people and experiences that are memorable and important and intimate.

So Moqui fit that for us. It let you leave cheap. I mean we paid $50 a month rent then. It was cheap and easy and they left you alone. That was it. It was a very simple life.

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Blog entry composed by Jay Thompson.

To learn more about Moqui Lodge and the 100 resort workers who called it home, click here.

To see a slide show, click here for Mac computers and here for PCs.