The line at the concession stand at Silvershell Beach stretches out under the pavilion and on to the grass. The patrons don’t come in waves – the long line of people is constant.

On the other side of the counter, taking care of each customer with some banter, a smile and always an emphatic “thank you,” is Glenn Lukowicz.

“I’ve learned to ignore the line or else I get some hypertension,” Lukowicz laughs.

The concession stand is run by Lukowicz and Lukowicz alone. He does everything from cook the hot dogs and scoop the slush, to buy the supplies and clean the stand.

He arrives each morning “as close to 10:30 as I can” and stays until around 6 or 6:30 p.m.

There’s a small calculator sitting in a nook in the wall of the stand, covered in dust. Lukowicz doesn’t use it, and he doesn’t use a cash register.

“I buy everything from BJ’s and New England Ice Cream and calculate backward from the receipt,” he said. “The money always comes out right.”

Lukowicz acquired the stand 15 years ago after former recreation department director Susan Kotowski offered it to him. He bought everything in the stand: the refrigerator, the coolers, the water heater, the microwave. He pays the town rent for the stand and has the freedom to run his business however he wants.

“You can more or less keep your prices the same. The novelties [ice cream] cost me $1.27, but I sell them for $1 because I know who’s buying them,” he said, motioning at the children in line.

Arguably the most popular item on the menu at the stand are the ice slushes. People can choose from two sizes, small or large, and a handful of flavors such as cotton candy, mango, blue raspberry, lemon and watermelon.

“I like to mix [the flavors] for the kids,” he said. “There’s no extra charge.”

He also doesn’t leave a tip jar out.

“I don’t want tips, even though people leave them,” he said. “I don’t want kids tipping. For what? Scooping slush? Give me a break.”

During the 10 weeks of the summer, the stand is rarely closed.

“Just for hurricanes,” Lukowicz said. “I even come when it rains, and I do a lot of cleaning. You’d be surprised how many kids come down for candy and slushes when it rains.”

Lukowicz, originally from Rhode Island, ended up in Marion after living all over the Western Hemisphere. He was drafted by the Army in 1963, and was immediately stationed in Panama after basic training because of his background in computer technology.

“My department was in charge of all the military disbursement and aids, so they needed the talent and it worked out well,” he said. “Honest to God I had a ball.”

He served for two years, before the four-star general let him go home 97 days early.

“If you just have a good attitude, you can get through the military, and then you can get through anything,” he said.

From Panama it was back to Rhode Island, where he took a job at St. Joseph’s Hospital in North Providence as director of computer services. It was there that he developed a payroll control program for the nursing station, which was then sold to IBM.

Lukowicz traveled the country giving presentations on his program, and while he was in New Orleans he so impressed the chief financial officer from the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu that he was offered a job.

“[The CFO] said ‘you didn’t have a teleprompter and you talked about everything you’re selling, I couldn’t believe it. Would you like to work for us?’”

So Lukowicz, his wife Celine and their children moved to Hawaii.

However, after five years in Honolulu, his family missed home and the job specs changed. So, they came back to the Northeast and Lukowicz took a job at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford as the director of information systems.

This was the move that brought him to Marion.

“I ended up living in Marion because I came here when one of my computer operators’ grandmother had just passed on, so he asked if I would like to rent her house,” he said.

Now, Lukowicz and his wife live in Dartmouth. Most days, his wife of 53 years accompanies him to the beach. She sits to the right side of the concession stand, acting as an enforcer if any kids get out of hand.

“We try to keep a balance to the kids’ behavior,” Lukowicz said. “But 99.9 percent of the time it’s phenomenal.”

The well-behaved children, the family environment and the diverse setting is why Lukowicz loves every day he spends at the stand.

“You look at what you get here, where the kids can roam around. Where else can you get that?” Lukowicz said. “You just can’t beat it, I could say it a thousand times.”