Our town was in trouble. The cafe that for years had hosted coffee row closed its doors.
The foundation of our community, the very premises from which the founders of coffee row held their first ever meeting, the site at which the original complaint about cold coffee was registered; all of this was gone. Coffee row was without a home.
We had some options. The confectionary store had a room, just beside the washroom, and that stood out as a viable alternative, as did the newly refurbished clubhouse on the golf course.
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The golf course was decent enough, and it opened early in the morning, but the clubhouse had to be eliminated from the short list of possible candidates put together by coffee row alumni. The tradition was clear: bad coffee, good apple pie. We might have known that when cinnamon rolls came along and replaced the apple pie, other changes were soon to be announced.
I am happy to tell you that new quarters have been found for coffee row. The guys get up early in the morning to go to their new home where they can begin the important task of intertwining fact and fiction in the daily reconstruction of the social dynamics found in the community. They do it in the little lunch room to the back of the flower shop.
A cook was hired by the florist to put together a breakfast menu for them, and to perfect the art of the imperfect coffee. Who would have thought of it? Yet there, mingled with the sweet scent of flowers, the essence of our community is reborn.
Daily stories are given new life,
the jokes continue, and the fellowship of the ring draws into a cohesive circle the who’s who on the social hierarchy.
We love to tease about coffee row. It carries with it the epitome of urban mythology. But coffee row is more than that. It is more than good fellowship and tall tales. It is more than an intersection of daily weather reports and political commentaries.
It is from coffee row that the word gets out when a family is in need, that we hear when someone is ill and needs community support to manage the fields.
Coffee row is there to let us know who has an extra bale of hay, and where we might find those dogs that chased and spooked someone’s
cattle.
It locates surplus vegetables from the fall gardens, and it passes around the formula for nurturing pumpkins to larger than life.
Coffee row is vital to our community, even if it is, at least temporarily, lodged in the lunchroom in the back of the flower shop.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor, living and working in west-central Saskatchewan who has taught social work for two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
