We have ONE coffee shop in our area.
I’m not counting the gas stations or restaurants that serve up weak coffee and even have the gall to ask you if you want decaf – who does that? Okay, I’m joking, but just a little bit.
We had two, but for various reasons, my favorite one went out of business. It didn’t have good parking, the hours were weird – what is it about small towns rolling up their sidewalks at 4:30 or 4 every evening?
The other coffee shop has unique coffees and teas, a kind of grunge/jazzy atmosphere, and comfy chairs in a convenient location that is within walking distance from my home. It’s also loud and proudly allied with the alphabet soup mob. And no, I’m not talking Shirley Temple.
We’re a small town. There’s not a whole lot to do on a Thursday or Friday night. Your husband comes home from work early and you haven’t had a date in months because the baby is permanently attached to your breast and you’d almost rather choose going to bed early rather than relationship building, but you also need to get out of the house because the walls are closing in on you and…
You get the drift.
So where do you go?
Perkins? They play music a little louder at night and their food is sub par but it’ll do in a pinch.
The supper club by the golf green? Good food, way overpriced for what a family of 8 can afford except in rare cases and they close early.
Walmart? As much as I enjoy late night shopping without the children – note the heavy sarcasm – it’s not really my idea of a date night.
Of course, in good weather, we can grab a cup of coffee from home and take it along the river walk or out on the overlook. We might come home with a few ticks, but otherwise, it’s inexpensive and a beautiful view with few intruders into the sanctuary of the outdoors.
It’s not just date night spaces that are sorely lacking.
It’s the places where great ideas are discussed and debated, where great minds see problems in their communities and come together to find resolutions that don’t involve government handouts with major strings attached. It’s the places that bloodless wars were fought, nations were built, and progress was ACTUALLY made in the right direction – as opposed to what we call “progress” today.
Those places used to found in the bookstores and coffee shops, libraries and pubs of local communities where the proprietor knew your name, your kids’ names, and probably the names of your dogs, your cousins, and that interesting uncle on your father’s side.
The “City Gates” so to speak where business was conducted, relationships were built, and life happened in real time.
Now our places of “higher” learning, our libraries, our campuses are dying for lack of true critical thought and discourse and our pubs are dirty places where college students go to get drunk and spend their parent’s hard earned money on partying.
And our coffee shops and bookstores?
They are still around, and when I walk into them, I want to cry seeing faces pressed into their phone screens or iPads instead of appreciating the richness of their surroundings in community with their neighbors.
Okay, I know I am making some generalizations here. Not every pub is a dirty, drunken mess and not every coffee shop proudly flies rainbow flag that has nothing to do with Noah’s ark or God’s promises.
But I think all of us can attest to the fact that the places for romantic date nights and late night discussions on politics, classics, great ideas, and religion are fewer and further between than they ever have been in our nation’s history.
I am a part of three book clubs. Only one of them is in person and it’s ending for the summer. The other books clubs are online and I’ve only met one of my friends in person out of about twenty fellow readers. And I am NOT knocking the online book clubs. They are some of my most fun and insightful hours spent in passionate discussion and even sometimes a little heated – but respectful – debate.
In spite of the amazing advancements of technology, I have to say that I am missing the personal touch. It’s a whole lot different discussing books in a zoom call than it is in one’s own home or local bookstore. And while I would never say I was a purist for in person-onlys, I will say that I am also a bit old school.
I can appreciate discourse and conversation in any venue. I LOVE it when I can give my fellow debaters and coffee/tea drinkers a hug after we’re all finished. And I cannot be the only one who still yearns for face to face connection with my other human beings.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the digital world. I can even post an avatar of myself in place of my video if I was too lazy to get out of my pajamas that day or blur my background if my office is messy to the point of embarrassment. To do work and school and relationship-building from the comfort of my own home is this introvert’s daydream.
Ultimately, however, it’s not the healthiest path to walk. Not if I want to model real life to my children. After all, I do not engage with them over a zoom call when they are in the next room. Instead, I get the hot water boiling and the coffee pot percolating, make a sweet treat, and sit down with them in the afternoons – usually with two or three of them plastered to me – to read a book, discuss current events, or just help them work through every day struggles they are going through. We pray together, eat meals together, and engage in life together.
It is healing, rejuvenating, exhausting, exhilarating, and the harder path to choose to engage in person, face-to-face. I can shut out real life only for so long before real life sticks its sticky fingers under my door and demands that I return.
I want a bookstore coffee shop that brings THAT atmosphere and engagement to my community. After all, the family is the bedrock of the community and what happens in the family, happens in the community on a larger scale.
Which is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in our communities. We can walk down to the local park and see half of the kids and their parents with their eyes glued to their digital device. Same in restaurants, bookstores, libraries, Walmart, and more. My neighbors don’t sit out on the front porch to watch the rainstorm and gab with us about the happenings of the past week. We only know our neighbors because my kids are extremely friendly and catch them off guard when they’re out doing yard work or coming home from their jobs. I’m not sure whether to bake treats to placate the slightly harassed neighbors or feel embarrassed that my kids know the names of everyone in a three block radius and I have yet to speak to more than five.
Maybe a little bit of both.
All of this conversational rambling brings me to my 5 year goal. It’s a pipe dream right now for this mama of six trying to pay the bills, but I want to build a bookstore coffee shop that my friends, family, and neighbors can enter, feel right at home, enjoy their favorite beverages, and not worry about hidden – or not-so-hidden – garbage on the bookshelves. Where the couches and chairs are comfy and one can settle into a moody corner to read their favorite book alone or join a larger group of people discussing the current events, debating philosophy and religion, politics and science. Where the proprietor knows your name and the names of your children, grandchildren, dogs, and the interesting uncle on your father’s side.
A place where the family influences and awakens the culture to a better way of life.