A Piedmont Porchlight Story

You could set your watch by the Coffee Cup. Five-thirty every morning, lights came on. By six, the first pot of coffee was already earning its keep. By seven, half of Piedmont had solved the nation’s problems. And by eight, they’d started over.

Folks used to joke that if the Coffee Cup ever closed, the whole town would oversleep. I wasn’t entirely convinced they were joking. Now, don’t misunderstand me. There were times the doors stayed locked. Ice storms. Power outages. A busted water pipe once caused enough excitement to make the front page of The Piedmont Journal.

But it never stayed closed for long. Somehow, some way, Coffee always found a way. One winter an ice storm rolled through Calhoun County and left everything looking like it’d been dipped in glass. Tree limbs snapped. Power lines sagged. The roads were slick enough to make a penguin nervous.

About daylight I wandered down toward Centre Avenue just to see how the town had weathered the night. The Coffee Cup was dark. I stood there a minute. It looked wrong. Just wrong. Like seeing Curtis Pope without his scissors. Or the depot without tracks. A town gets accustomed to certain things.

About that time, I heard somebody holler from the alley. “Jim!” It was Hattie. She and Curtis were wrestling a little propane camp stove out of the back of somebody’s pickup. “What in the world are y’all doing?” She looked at me like I’d asked why birds fly.

“Making coffee.” “The power’s out.” She shrugged. “So?” Within an hour there were folding tables lined up on the sidewalk. Extension cords snaked across the street from the hardware store where somebody had coaxed an old generator back to life. One fellow brought doughnuts. Somebody else showed up with homemade biscuits wrapped in towels to keep them warm. Mrs. Landry arrived carrying enough sausage gravy to feed the Alabama National Guard.

Nobody asked who was in charge. Piedmont has always been a little suspicious of committees. Everybody simply found something to do. Curtis poured coffee. Sheriff Booker directed traffic around the ice-covered corner, though I suspect he spent as much time drinking coffee as directing automobiles. Addison Lee wandered around taking photographs. He claimed he was documenting history. We claimed he was avoiding carrying tables.

By nine o’clock the Coffee Cup wasn’t open. It was everywhere. The smell of fresh coffee drifted halfway down Main Street. Folks stood around warming their hands on paper cups while checking on neighbors. “Need anything?” “You got enough firewood?” “How’s your mama ’nem?” “Y’all staying warm?”

Funny thing about disasters. They have a way of reminding you what matters. Nobody cared the menu was shorter than usual. Nobody complained that the coffee came in paper cups instead of thick white mugs. Nobody asked for the Wi-Fi password.

They came because that’s where their people were. Late that afternoon the lights flickered back on. Everybody cheered. Hattie looked around at the crowd gathered on the sidewalk and laughed.

“Well. I reckon we can go back inside now.” There wasn’t a single customer in a hurry to leave.

Truth is, they’d been sitting in the biggest dining room Piedmont ever had. Years later, somebody asked me what made the Coffee Cup so special. The biscuits? Certainly didn’t hurt. The coffee? Best in town. But that wasn’t it.

The Coffee Cup wasn’t a building. It was an agreement. An understanding that every morning, no matter what yesterday had looked like, there’d be a hot cup waiting. A friendly face behind the counter. Somebody willing to slide over and make room at the table.

I’ve always thought that’s one of the finest gifts a town can give its people. A place where your chair isn’t reserved. But somehow, It always seems to be waiting. These days, whenever I hear somebody say, “It’s just a little diner,” I can’t help but smile.

No, it isn’t. It’s where birthdays get remembered. It’s where new babies get admired in photographs. It’s where grieving widowers get coaxed back into conversation one cup of coffee at a time. It’s where strangers stop being strangers before they’ve finished their second refill.

Buildings come and go. Businesses open and close. Signs fade. Paint peels. But places like the Coffee Cup? Those don’t survive because of brick and mortar. They survive because every town needs somewhere to gather when life is ordinary and somewhere to gather when it isn’t.

And if you ask me, as long as there’s somebody willing to put the coffee on…

The Coffee Cup will never really close.