Logbook 1: 'The sunna bitches'
Crazy Mike's a regular at Lost Goat Coffee House. Against the crisp rain on most mornings he goads his shopping cart past the granary and across the railroad tracks, his long white beard dripping with mist and drizzle. His cart is brimming with his treasures and necessities, all he has, packed into a cart that most people use to load up on a week of groceries. He carefully parks the cart by the door, the black plastic bags and burlap bulging from the wire mesh as if planning an escape. Mike invariably straightens his clothes, pushes his shoulders back and stands confidently erect before clearing his throat and entering Lost Goat. We're always glad to see him.
Don't know where Crazy Mike is from or where he's going. He's comfortable with his name, pejorative as it is. He chats amiably as he sips his cup of coffee, drawn from the airpot of rarest and finest single origins we have on hand. Makes no sense at all; we want Mike to have the best. Occasionally someone drops a buck in the tip jar on Mike's behalf. The House never charges. It's his only luxury.
Mike has steel blue eyes that crinkle at the center of the etched laugh lines around his eyes. He wears a street-dirty baseball cap with an IBM logo on it, an odd juxtaposition of high technology and low life. The whiskers around his mouth and under his nose are yellowed and tired, like the paint on the '59 Cadillac that Ernie, the Shanghai auto mechanic next door, has been restoring for the past several years. No one knows Mike's age and no one asks. The bushy white hairs that grow from his ears and the ones that curl on the prow of his nose suggest at least 50 years. The street has added perhaps 20 more.
"They're after me again," Mike says to no one. "The sunna bitches."
"Comin' atcha again, Mike?" says JR, our morning barista. Like a seasoned barkeep, JR tracks probably a hundred conversations with his many customers. The dialogues unfold over days and weeks and months and years, lives insidiously unfolding tidbit by tidbit. "Don't worry, bud. We gotcha covered. Have some coffee friend."
It's 7 a.m., and the spoon on the counter begins to rattle even before we hear the whistle. The freight from Timberville, laden with another horizontal forest of Douglas fir, is bearing down on Lost Goat. It feels like the weight of the world shot from a mighty cannon, and its arrival is an inevitable and irresistable part of the day. We wait in half meditation for it to pass. Then we pick up where we left off, deferential to forces much bigger than us.
"The sunna bitches," Mike says.
Don't know where Crazy Mike is from or where he's going. He's comfortable with his name, pejorative as it is. He chats amiably as he sips his cup of coffee, drawn from the airpot of rarest and finest single origins we have on hand. Makes no sense at all; we want Mike to have the best. Occasionally someone drops a buck in the tip jar on Mike's behalf. The House never charges. It's his only luxury.
Mike has steel blue eyes that crinkle at the center of the etched laugh lines around his eyes. He wears a street-dirty baseball cap with an IBM logo on it, an odd juxtaposition of high technology and low life. The whiskers around his mouth and under his nose are yellowed and tired, like the paint on the '59 Cadillac that Ernie, the Shanghai auto mechanic next door, has been restoring for the past several years. No one knows Mike's age and no one asks. The bushy white hairs that grow from his ears and the ones that curl on the prow of his nose suggest at least 50 years. The street has added perhaps 20 more.
"They're after me again," Mike says to no one. "The sunna bitches."
"Comin' atcha again, Mike?" says JR, our morning barista. Like a seasoned barkeep, JR tracks probably a hundred conversations with his many customers. The dialogues unfold over days and weeks and months and years, lives insidiously unfolding tidbit by tidbit. "Don't worry, bud. We gotcha covered. Have some coffee friend."
It's 7 a.m., and the spoon on the counter begins to rattle even before we hear the whistle. The freight from Timberville, laden with another horizontal forest of Douglas fir, is bearing down on Lost Goat. It feels like the weight of the world shot from a mighty cannon, and its arrival is an inevitable and irresistable part of the day. We wait in half meditation for it to pass. Then we pick up where we left off, deferential to forces much bigger than us.
"The sunna bitches," Mike says.
