Thanksgiving Old North Side Cafe Story

Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat.

The rain lingered through the night and covered the morning with a dull gray sheen. Fallen leaves marked the final vengeance of autumn. Bare trees glistened in the haze, waiting.

This is cafe weather. This is huddle together, slap back, dumb joke, where-ya-been? weather. The coffee never smells better or warms deeper.

Like little kids who make fortress tents of old sheets and pillows, the men crawl in their cafe and they are safe.

“How about that guy they left dead on the golf course for two hours?” asked Camelot Bob. “His buddies just played on through. Now, doesn't that beat anything you ever heard?”

“That's what happens when you move to Florida.  You get ‘value disorientation’.
‘Compassion fatigue’ sets in and death on the course is just another hazard,” said Ridgeway Ron.

“Ron, shut up!” Bob said. “Or talk English like the rest of us.”

“If I croak on the golf course promise me you won't leave me out there two hours to finish your game,” said Manor Hill Mack.

“Depends,” said Bob dead-pan serious. “If you die on the front nine-no problem, but if it's the back nine, and I'm hot, well....”

Wadded napkins bombed Bob, as usual, with a chorus of “boo's”.

The rain picked up outside and the men drew closer.

The talk wound around everyday life and finally landed on Thanksgiving.

Families are gathering. Birds are getting smoked, potatoes mashed, bread baked and toilet paper stocked-up.

Mack, the ex-Gas Service Co. employee, told the now legendary, and mostly untrue, story of being called out to check a gas leak on Thanksgiving Day. The gas leak turned out to be an old dog with a digestion problem.

Jake told his boyhood story about throwing the Thanksgiving goose in the trash can because he hated goose and wanted turkey. Jake blamed it on the dog.

Wind drove the rain hard against the plate-glass windows, and the laughter increased. Some stories the men knew by heart, but the telling never got old. The friendship implied in their shared stories was its own Thanksgiving.

After a while the talk wore out. Men excused themselves to the rest of the day. The cafe was mostly empty as Stella began clearing and wiping tables.  She too, knew the stories, and loved them.

On Thanksgiving Day she would open the restaurant for those who had no place to go. It was her tradition and cost her plenty.

Stella is not a religious person in the traditional sense. She does remember a Bible story however about a man who was left for dead on the side of the road and others passed him by. Finally it was an outcast who gave him help.

There's also a story about doing things for the least among us that brings us closer to Christ.

While the men stayed home and plied their day with food and family, Stella and her rag-tag band fed anyone who asked. None went without on Thanksgiving Day.  Nobody was left on the side while others played through. 

Stella watched the wind and rain. Her cafe was a safe harbor; one of the few in our politically charged county.  Outside the terrifying “cultural blind spots”, rationalization, and “tribal warfare: swirled tearing leaves from the trees and harkening winter.

Values disorientation, compassion fatigue, cultural blind spots, safe harbors --Stella never heard of any of them, but she knows.

-->

She knows our Thanksgiving will be most blessed when the least among us join the feast.