The Coffee counter

The coffee counter, and it doesn't matter which diner or coffee shop it is located in, has and will always be important to me. I have often been amazed at how two complete strangers can sit at a coffee counter and talk to each other as they knew one another all of their lives. Some folks that you sit beside and chat about the weather or politics. Yet you may never even know their last name... maybe not even their name at all. They just become familiar strangers in your life. Just someone y0u expect to see every time you go into that particular establishment.

Some of my best and not so best of friends in life I have met just sitting at a coffee counter. My wife, I have met across a coffee counter. She worked at the old Classic Donuts on Wyandotte Street and Hall Avenue in Windsor. Ontario. That place is long gone now, just the memories of the many many hours spent in their linger in the minds of the old regulars. They know who they are. They also know what they mean to me. Yet as I travel through life, and to other coffee shops or diners, I will meet more familiar strangers. We will talk about the weather, politics, and now our kids. It is quite comforting how the pattern works itself out again.

You sit down, served coffee by a vetran waitress, who has a few stories to tell of her own. You fix your coffee to your liking. Glance at the paper, then the guy or the gal sitting next to you says something in passing. From there it grows. If you go back again, same time different day you see the person you chatted up before and you both pick up where you left off.

Some of the diners, have a regular reliable menu that you can choose from to tame your hunger. But it is usually about the coffee, and the other customers sitting at the counter. Complete stranger or not. Some place to go and just talk.