Following a dream

Melanie Fortin knew just where to build her general store. Now she’s building a future for her family.

Story by Shannon Comes At Night
Photographs by Jamey Daniel

Melanie Fortin remembers vividly the sounds of singing erupting from the Sun Dance ceremony near Hays on the Fort Belknap Reservation.

The sun’s rays pierced the center of the scared lodge. Then, from the Bear Paw Mountains flew a giant thunderbird that landed near her home, which is next to Highway 66 on the reservation. As the bird flew back toward the mountains an eagle flew from the Little Rockies and circled the Sun Dance. Then the thunderbird returned and joined the eagle. The two birds circled the lodge before diving into it.

When Fortin woke from her mystical dream she knew it was a sign from Creator.

“I think it’s Creator’s way of saying everything is all right and you’re taken care of,” she says.

It was that dream that guided her family’s decision to bank their savings on a business venture on their reservation.

Fortin and her husband, Dale, opened Fortin’s General Store a year ago, at the precise spot where in Fortin’s dream the thunderbird landed.

Fortin had been without work for three years. Her husband had a job, but in some years their finances were precarious. One Christmas she nearly was unable to buy presents for her family.

“It was hard,” she says. “My husband worked seasonal jobs in Rudyard operating heavy equipment. We barely paid our bills.”

They thought hard about their options.

“There was jobs my husband could get in Wyoming, but we’d have to leave our home,” says Fortin. “Once you live in a place for a long time and you move away, it’s not the same. We decided our home is here.”

So together they decided to invest their livestock, savings, and early retirement money into a family business, Fortin’s General Store. It opened May 13, 2000.

The electric blue and green store and their three- bedroom trailer, which they bought new 22 years ago, sits on the west side of Highway 66 kitty corner to the junction of Route 11, commonly known as “Lodge Pole Road.”

“A customer can’t miss our store,” she says.

Three years ago, Fortin went to the Small Business Information Center in Fort Belknap for information on how to start and operate a small business.

Caroline Brown, director of a program affiliated with Fort Belknap Community College, says the Fortins didn’t want to take the business planning classes offered by the center in order to qualify for a small business loan.

The Fortins thought the classes were “a lot of paperwork” Brown recalls. So she guided the Fortins through the basic information on how to start and operate a small business properly.

Fortin explains their decision: “It would have taken me a year to finish the classes. I didn’t have that kind of time because I wanted to open a store as soon as I could, because Beck’s (an establishment in Hays) had closed. People needed gas, and a better variety of food products.”

To get needed capital they had to sell the 35 cattle they owned, but did so without reluctance because the recent summers were so dry it was hard to feed the herd. Ironically, after they sold them, it started to rain.

The Fortins, who have been married for 32 years, saved enough money over two years and combined it with the proceeds from the cattle sale and bought part of an existing structure in Harlem from the business adviser who was helping them get started. Caroline Brown had operated Brown’s Grocery Store for 20 years before closing up the business. That 20 x 40-ft. structure cost $1,000 and they paid another $3,500 to move it. Moving and electricity and other bills came to $10,000, Fortin says.

Fortin says Brown had warned her the first three months would be hard. She had to pay for her deli products and other inventory up front. There is no credit. She stocked up from vendors who include Meadow Gold, Schwann’s, Frito Lay, Resers, High Country, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi Cola. The store now has a $10,000 inventory.

The store made $935.35 in sales for February, Fortin says in March, and all of the earnings went back into the business.

Fortin knows she must use good business practices if she is to succeed. So she doesn’t allow any credit.

Even her grandchildren have to pay for 5-cent bubble gum.

“It’s like taking money away from your store if you do,” she says.

In November, the Fortins purchased $5,000 worth of deli equipment because deli items—homemade jo-jo’s, cheeseburgers and fries—are some of the most popular things she sells. But she won’t keep the deli open every day the store is open.

“I don’t want people getting tired of the deli food,” she says, “that’s another reason I only keep it open five times a week.”

Gasoline is a big seller, but the popularity of a commodity doesn’t always determine whether she will offer it for sale.

“I could sell liquor, but I have seen what it has done to my people,” she says, explaining her decision. “It is a huge profit and I don’t judge anybody (but) I wouldn’t want the guilt of somebody dying after buying alcohol from me.”

For herself, Brown is glad she’s out of the grocery business. In the 20 years she operated Brown’s Grocery Store it was vandalized eight times. The final straw came in December 1992 when Brown says she and her husband and their granddaughter “could have been killed” after thieves entered at night through a hole in a wall where the intruders had removed an air conditioner. They took money, her husband’s new leather jacket, cartons of cigarettes and a safe full of rare coins and other valuables, while the Browns were asleep. The next morning she discovered the damage. Brown decided to quit the business and enroll in school, a choice that led to her present job.

Fortin has full-time help running the store from her daughter Melinda Fortin and part-time assistance from her husband and her nieces Holly and Denise Kirkaldie.

Dale Fortin also works at the Zortman mines, where he lays topsoil for plants and trees. He clears $2,800 every month.

“I’m thankful that my husband works,” she says. “Without his income I don’t know how we would manage our own expenses.”

She estimates 60 to 70 customers patronize the store each day. She tries to give back to the community, too.

Beside her cash register rests a jar, partially filled with coins and dollar bills, with a picture of Ari Talksdifferent, 5, who was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) in Billings. He has been receiving treatment in Denver since Nov. 24. MDS is a group of conditions caused by abnormalities of the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow and it can develop into leukemia.

“Nobody that young deserves to go through that type of pain,” she says. “I pray for him.”

Fortin is happy with her business decision and hopes the store will prosper enough so that she has something to pass on to her children.