Not Your Average Joe

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — Cool has found a home in Navajo land. Picture this:

It’s morning and you’re kicking back in your mud-stained Tony Lamas at Navajo Joe, the first and only coffeehouse on the Big Rez. You’re reading the latest Navajo Times and sipping a steaming double latte splashed with hazelnut, while listening as deejays on the tribal radio station introduce, in Navajo, an uninterrupted hour of country-western oldies.

Does it get any better than that?

“We’ve got Starbucks and Hank Williams. Man, that’s a combination you can’t get anyplace but here,” says owner Manny Wheeler, known to some as the Navajo Beatnik.

It seems wildly incongruous--an urban-style coffeehouse amid the pickup trucks and red mesas of the Navajo capital. But the idea made perfect sense to Wheeler, a 26-year-old art history graduate from Arizona State University.

He spent much of his time in college in Phoenix-area caffeine bars and was convinced the same kind of business would fly in Window Rock. He grew up here and is well aware that coffee is as much a staple to Navajos as fry bread.

When he returned home in 1993, Wheeler worked a few years at odd jobs and in his spare time polished his business plan. After talking to his aunt about a loan, he searched for a location to open a coffeehouse of his own.

He found it in an empty storefront in the only shopping center in this town of about 3,000. Navajo Joe is right next to the general store, the one with the sign in the front window offering a special on fishing worms.

Instead of “What’s your sign?” the big pickup line here is, “What’s your clan?”

And the interior doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of swank. Wall hangings include an old saddle and a rotting wagon harness, items Wheeler collected from outside his grandmother’s house. The last business to occupy the space was an archery store, and the back wall has the arrow holes to prove it.

But cool is relative. In its seven months of operation, Navajo Joe has created a big buzz in the land of big rocks.

“This is the happening place on the rez,” says Frank Seanez, 39, a lawyer for the tribe who also plays the fiddle in a local bluegrass band. “Tuba City, Chinle, Kayenta,” he says, naming other reservation towns, “they have nothing like this in the area of music and graphic arts.”

Wheeler’s goal was to create an environment in which all kinds of people, especially the young, could sit and talk, listen to local bands, or knock off a few hours in a secondhand easy chair. He wanted no attitude. Anti-snob, he calls it.

He’s achieved that, and something else, in a place where most businesses are part of national chains. Coming soon to the same shopping center: TCBY Yogurt, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut.

“This place is 100% Navajo owned and operated, and I’m proud of that,” says Wheeler, whose first name, Manuelito, is in honor of the tribe’s great 19th century chief. “It screams Navajo-ness.”

His definition: “Being Navajo is taking what’s around you and mastering it, using it to your benefit. I look at this coffeehouse as an art piece. You keep adding to it until you have a sense of what works. You know, the composition of the piece.”

In addition to his grandmother’s castoffs, the wall decor includes Johnny Cash album covers and clips from outrageous tabloids: “Nude Sunbathers Attacked by Crazed Sea Gulls!”

Some of Wheeler’s own paintings hang on the back wall. One is an abstract of a bronc rider, done in black and gray, on a warped slab of cardboard. “That’s my Cubist phase,” he says of the work. “Dude from Chicago offered me $500 for it. I said it’s not for sale. I’m like that with my art.”

But selling coffee is something else, especially on the reservation, which is the size of West Virginia. Three times a month, Wheeler drives 250 miles round-trip to Albuquerque to buy his beans. And he doesn’t have a phone, either at Navajo Joe or at home.

The way he looks at it, if it’s worth knowing, it’s gossiped about in his store the next morning; and if it’s business-related, messages can be left with friends at the Navajo Times. But he’s thinking of putting a phone in anyway.

Wheeler’s biggest challenge has been appealing to older Navajos. When he opened, they’d amble in, wearing their cowboy hats and bright turquoise, and stare blankly at the Konas and mochas on the wall menu. When they learned that the shop didn’t carry regular coffee, some shook their heads and walked out.

“They’d get mad at me. I was ready to buy a blue enamel pot and boil up sheepherder’s coffee, or squaw dance,” says Wheeler, referring to Navajo slang for any brand that packs a wallop. He finally gave in and added a pot of Farmer’s Bros. It kept the traditionalists around.

They make an interesting mix: kids wearing Nine Inch Nails T-shirts and middle-age Navajos with AIM (American Indian Movement) logos on their denim jackets.

Then there are the regulars. Mark Mason, part Navajo and part Sioux, is a 29-year-old musician who plays weekend gigs at Navajo Joe with his band, Burn in Effigy. Even when he’s not playing, Mason hangs there. “It’s comfortable,” he says, admiring the black ceiling and yellow walls. “I like the colors.”

Raymond Butler Jr. never misses chess nights on Mondays and Thursdays. He’s a homicide investigator for the tribal police and the highest rated chess player on the reservation. “I bring my own board and set up,” Butler says. “It keeps me sharp.”

Wheeler hopes to ride the energy he’s created into other reservation towns. But expansion must wait until the success of Navajo Joe is assured. “We’re not going gangbusters or anything. I’m paying my bills,” says Wheeler, father of a 6-month-old boy, his first. His wife teaches English at Window Rock High.

For the time being, he’s enjoying the lazy afternoons, chatting with whomever comes in the door, and listening to the music blaring from the wall speakers. At the moment, it’s the Ventures’ Christmas album.

“Man, I love surf music,” he says.