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| The Coffee Cups | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 15 2007, 05:51 AM (86 Views) | |
| Jolly | Apr 15 2007, 05:51 AM Post #1 |
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Geaux Tigers!
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Nothing works up an appetite like spending your morning digging through the innards of a formalin-soaked cat. Inevitably, about 9AM it would always happen...one of the young Quasimotos-in-training would poke their head up above the fumes, and annnounce to the lab, "I'm making a donut run, y'all gimmee some money if you want any!". Two bucks a dozen, or a quarter apiece. Most of the time 4 or 5 of us would split a dozen. If you were really flush you could spring for a chocolate dough, chocolate covered, bavarian creme stuffed eclair. Nothing like a 200 gram sugar rush to get your day off to a good start. Money collected, the chosen courier would cross the back parking lot of the biology building, catty-corner across the Methodist church's side yard, and walk down the sidewalk a block to get to the donut shop. When you opened the door to the shop, the scene that greeted you was almost never-changing...a row of hot donuts in warming cases behind the counter, some birthday cakes in a glass display case to the side, a roomfull of grey-headed and balding men, munching donuts, swigging coffee, and arguing about all the things that really mattered, or maybe about the things that mattered none at all. If you were new to the shop, you might not notice any of that. What first caught your eye would be the coffee cups on pegs in the corner. Maybe a hundred or more, stored on the wall behind the coffee pots, besides the donuts. Coffee cups emblazoned with the names of local businesses, some with the names of familiar companies like Schlumberger or John Deere. A lot of them would be marked "Pops", "Grandpa" or "Pawpaw". Maybe a few handmade ones, a few with grandkid's pictures on them, more than one with a military service emblem on the side. My cup wasn't on the wall, nor any of my peers'. We didn't rate high enough in donut shop society. Oh, we'd speak to folks when we walked in - you usually saw the same guys at the same times - but we didn't dare walk around the corner of the counter. That privledge was reserved for those accepted by the men who spent their mornings there, and you didn't get a spot of your own until they talked it over with the shop owner. When you "arrived" in said society, you got a spot on the wall to hang your brought-from-home cup, and you were put into rotation to make coffee. Some things change with time, some things don't. It's been almost thirty years since I've been by that donut shop. I know the owner died, and the place changed hands ten years or so, ago. But it was still deja vu when I walked in there last week - same coffee pots, same donuts. The old men have changed, but they look the same. And the cups still hang on the wall. Suddenly it was 1976 all over again. I hope I didn't smell like formalin.... |
| The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros | |
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| Dewey | Apr 15 2007, 06:08 AM Post #2 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Another wonderful word painting, Jolly. Thanks for offering it up. When I was in my twenties, I knew a hardware store that had a peg rack of coffee cups a lot like you've described. the regulars met there, around a pot-bellied stove, believe it or not, to solve the world's problems and enjoy each other's company. That coffee cup experience was also in the late 1970's, and I envied those men. Many years later, I was part of a group that got together every Friday morning for coffee. Some of us were regulars in that group for fifteen years or more. We claimed that we were doing it to share business leads, and occasionally that happened. But usually, we just got together to get together. We met at the same restaurant, and as much as any professional accolade may have meant, one of the things that I was proudest of was that the restaurant management, while not keeping my coffee cup on a peg, granted me, and us, the honor of going behind the counter to pour our own refills. We were family. Funny how little things stick with you. |
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