The Starbuck's Fix

Events conspired to create a routine. Tinker's internet connection was toasted by lightening last week, leaving Welch without access to email and the web. Not exactly a tragedy but damned inconvenient. My interim solution is to drive over to the Starbuck's in LaGrange and dip into the WIFI hot spot and get a good cup of coffee in the process. I asked The Old Goat to join me. To my knowledge he doesn't have an email account and has never explored the web but thought he might enjoy the ride. As I, he enjoys a rich, full-bodied cup of Joe. So, while I monkey with email, he listens to the music and sips on his medium house coffee, hot and black. We have fallen into a pattern -- and as any Southern will tell you, if you do something once, it becomes a tradition. The Old Goat has breakfast ready at 6 am after which we drive to do whatever computer work is on tap. As we drive over to LaGrange, he tells me abut the town when he was a kid. Dirt streets, cotton mills, lumber yards. He points out street corners and tells me about what was there sixty and seventy years ago. That on the right used to be a spinning shed where he worked before the war. Over there used to be a car dealer. Every time he passed that car lot, he'd dream of buying himself a car. This place has changed. "I can hardly recognize it," he says. What hit me was that we were driving to buy coffee and send electronic messages around the world in a place that once The Old Goat thought was the world. Today, after a particularly big breakfast -- fried eggs, sausage, cantaloupe, tomatoes, peach preserves, and biscuits -- he put on his outside shoes and his hat, ready to go to LaGrange. My computer dependency has lead to his fixation on a daily cup of Starbuck's coffee.