I’d walked by one of those little free libraries on my way to the cafe. It shushed me.
We needed one of those libraries when The Table of Infinite Knowledge gathered at the Eat Around It Cafe.
It’s a playground during recess. It’s a place where the world sometimes makes sense. That’s all we ask.
It was right smart weather we were having. “Right smart” means considerable and we always have considerable weather. Good weather to some is bad weather to others.
Some knights of the Table are retired, some aren’t and some have been retired all their lives.
Everyone but one of us got starter fluid in a cup – coffee. Some waited for the beverage to cool naturally, while others tossed spoonfuls of ice from a water glass into the coffee. I’m not mature enough to drink coffee. In my boyhood, we hand-pumped the coffee out of the ground and carried it into the house in a 5-gallon bucket. That’s why I don’t drink coffee.
One knight had retired from the railroad, where he’d worked half the livelong day and made coffee from his tears. Another had worked barefoot at a Lego factory and was disheartened that his two favorite cars (Pontiac and Saturn) were no longer manufactured. We looked at poor photos trying to make a mountain lion out of a molehill.
Another told a story about the small town where he’d grown up. He talked of playing bruiseball in gym class. That’s dodgeball for those not good at dodging. His hometown was getting smaller all the time. I asked him what people did there.
“Mostly, they leave.”
It was his birthday. We got him nothing. We get him the same thing every year.
There was rampant speculation about Culver’s or Aldi magically appearing nearby. There was no talk of politics because it leads to cussing, and we sat at a profanity-prohibited table. We’re there for knowledge, not bad language lessons. Besides, the service slowed to a glacial crawl when a vulgarism was detected.
“He’s going to hell on a scholarship,” grumbled another, the epithet nearly violating the indecent language restriction. He folded the newspaper he was reading and pulled a red handkerchief with the dimensions of a tablecloth meant for a conference table from his back pocket. It was a hankie that did the job of a big box of Kleenex facial tissues. He honked his nose with the hankie. He cusses only when necessary, and he always finds it necessary. He’d been ice fishing and complained about the lethargic fish that forced him to live on beef jerky sandwiches, so he ordered biscuits and gravy – the 50 Shades of Gravy special.
His fishing partner said, “You know what I’m going to do if I ever become a billionaire? Not a thing.”
Every knight reminded him he did that now.
I recalled an old fisherman from Taopi who, when asked what he did with himself in the evenings, replied, “Oh, sometimes I sit and think, and other times I just sit.”
Victor Hugo wrote, “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
The friendly waitress brought the meals.
“This isn’t what I ordered,” griped one.
“You wouldn’t have wanted what you ordered.”
“I don’t want what you brought me, either.”
“Then what’s the difference?”
I can’t complain. There are many caring people, but the rest either don’t care to hear my complaints or are happy to hear I have some.
I emerged from the Eat Around It Cafe a better man.
Later that day, safely ensconced at home, I sat in a battered armchair with a sag earned over the years. I’d finished a book, so I was just sitting. I wasn’t even drooling.
“Honey, what are you thinking about?” asked my wife.
“Nothing.”
“You have to be thinking about something.”
After many years of marriage, she still doesn’t know me that well. I wanted to surround the question with words and tell her that sometimes I sit and think, and other times I just sit.
Instead, I let the cat out of the bag and said, “I was thinking how much I love you.”
I believe in promoting world peace.
Photo by Al Batt
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