Come on In

Katie, who keeps the café's daily log, is living a life I haven't actually chosen. Stubblejumpers Café exists only in my memory and imagination.

Week 1. The Café Opens

Monday
On the other side of this antique wood and glass countertop, behind which I’m perched on a high stool, is the front of the Stubblejumpers Café. After 20 years with its doors locked and windows boarded up, this old abandoned diner of my childhood days, cleaned up and renovated, opens once more for business here in my tiny home town.
It’s almost 10 o’clock. Time for muffins to spring hot from the oven, and the first pot of coffee to be brewed. Time for my sister (and partner) Dawn to arrive with her contribution to the day’s grub. Time to go unlock the door for the morning regulars. Of course there’s no coffee row yet, nor any regulars. But there will be. Open the door, and they will come. Right?

Tuesday
A cardboard shoebox holding bills and coins rests on the countertop that divides the kitchen from the booths and tables out front. Next to it a handwritten sign announces silently, “You are your own cashier.” In life, we have to make our own change. I’m not only making a statement; I’m practicing trust.
People are honest around here. Cheap, but honest. Many of the village residents are senior citizens, who can all count in their heads. They learned the old way, they’ll tell you. None of this “calculator business” for the sons and daughters of the early pioneers. They didn’t need computers to get along in the world. They learned how to use their heads, they say. Not like now, when young people can’t add two and two without the use of a machine.
Dawn was the first person through the door yesterday, just as I was setting steaming breakfast muffins out on the self-serve table. Bearing a huge tray of her fancy fresh pastries, she barely had time to quip “What, no one here yet?” before the local yokels started making their way across the street from the post office, their first stop of the day. The screen door opened and banged shut behind them as one customer after another stepped through it.
They ignored the cosy new booths lining the north wall. After filling their coffee mugs and piling up their plates from the selection of baked goods, they parked themselves around the two tables between my counter here and the door. The café was all farmer hats and blue jeans and good-natured ribbing for the next hour. Finally Old Man Stodlund got up to leave, and the others followed suit, pushing back their chairs as if to say “Yep, it’s time.” They teased me about the cash box, but threw their loonies and toonies into it; men always have a pocketful, don’t they? A few moments later the screen door slammed again and the café was as still as if they’d never been here.
The clerks from the grocery store at the end of the next block took turns walking over for a lunch of soup and sandwiches. My godmother stopped in, too, looking for Dawn’s white bread and buns, which are famous around here and will bring the customers in even if my granola-nut cooking doesn’t. Gran and Aunt V strolled over, arm in arm, for their afternoon tea, and some of their cronies from the seniors’ club across the street came over, too.

Wednesday
Just a few minutes to collect my thoughts before unlocking the front door. It’s almost 10 and I’ve been on the go since 6: got raisin-rye bread rising and the morning muffins in the oven, after marching down to the lake with the Dumpling Dog. Coffee, my reward for the walking and measuring and mixing, is brewing. My eldest son caught the schoolbus outside the front door more than an hour ago, and I have yet to see or hear another vehicle today.
This seems like a ghost town sometimes, but it never stays this way for long. One minute you look down the street and see no sign of life; the next the dust is being stirred up by several vehicles in a row. Between customers and wiping tables and washing dishes and cooking, I’ve managed to unpack books onto the shelves in the tarot parlour this week, but it’s been quite a social whirl, with all the goings and comings.

Thursday
We enter our living quarters through the kitchen behind me, where curtained french doors can be closed when we want to shut out the noise and nosiness of the café. Some of my “intuitive counseling” clients will prefer to sit at the kitchen table back there, for privacy. Some won’t want to be seen having their cards read, or won’t want their business overheard; and most wouldn’t want anyone to think they’d take such things as tarot cards seriously. Some ask me to read their cards for the hell of it, and my regulars come once a year, or every six months if they’re having tough times and looking for insight and perspective.

Friday
People have been coming into the café as much to see what’s going on as to have anything to eat. We’ve gone through a bale of tea and coffee, I’ll say that. Lifelong acquaintances have shown up, and that’s a bonus after all my years away because they’re the ones I think of visiting in their homes but rarely do. Even the busiest of them come to town for the mail or groceries and will stop in here if for no other reason than to say hello.
This is a tiny town, where I once knew everybody and half of them were my cousins. You can stroll through the nine intersecting streets sometimes and not see a movement but for the odd half-ton crossing the other end of the road. I don’t hope to be stampeded by customers, but for just enough gentle grazers to help me get the bills paid. You might be looking at the least ambitious restaurant owner in the world.
Still, the cash in the box has proliferated beyond my expectations already. Methinks there is one of those elves around, one that makes money instead of shoes while I’m sound asleep upstairs at night. Surely we haven’t sold that much food or drink in our first week, but the cash box is overflowing. Perhaps someone with money to burn is playing a joke on me. A very pleasant joke.

Week 2. Too Much Cash

Monday
And a fine good morning to you. A restful weekend has ended and we’re soon ready to open our door for the day.
Dawn will be here this afternoon. She makes the most delicious cream puffs and long johns and buns. Fortunately for my butt, the appeal of any food lessens when I see it in front of me day after day. That will be my saving grace with Dawn’s pastries.
It’s time to put the morning muffins into the oven, then shape the bread dough into loaves for its last rise, and throw together a vat of soup for lunch. Away I go ... another day, another dollar. Or should I say another couple hundred? If the money elf is going to be a regular, I won’t have to work very hard to make the café pay for itself.
The following letter came in over the weekend by email, the unexpected bonus of posting this owner’s log to my webpage:

I will tell you, whenever we have a garage sale, I'm amazed at the end of the day by the amount of money taken in. You know, selling items for a quarter or a few dollars doesn't seem like it's worth the time and effort to arrange a garage sale & sit there the whole day. But when it's over and you count all the singles and the coins, there's usually a surprising amount there to perk up your spirits and I'm amazed by how much was taken in. Maybe you just didn't realize how much everything in the café really adds up to? ~~ Kenny B, Long Island

Dawn didn’t believe me at first when I told her how much cash was in the box. She was here enough last week to get a good idea how many people came in, and it doesn’t add up in her mind either. There aren’t enough customers in the entire town to spend that much money on soup and toast in one week. It’s about twice what it should have been; the amount is too far out of whack. I’ve stuck the big bills into an old china pitcher up in the kitchen cupboard so they’ll be handy to give back when we get this sorted out.

Tuesday
  Gran doesn’t like the way I run the café.
 “You have to get your own stuff. I don’t know what that’s all about,” she grumbled the other day, as if she’s never walked through the line at a self-serve cafeteria in her life.
 It’s simple enough; there’s a serving table along the south wall of the café, holding a warm crockpot of soup next to a toaster oven and the coffee pots. Alongside these things are the breads, buns, muffins and such, beneath a shelf holding silverware, dishes and carrying trays. Everything you need is right there, including hot water for tea, and the tea itself. It’s only a few steps over to the drink fridge. What’s not to like?
 “Well,” I told her, “I don’t want to be a waitress. Been there, done that. It’s the most undervalued job in the world, in spite of the effort and organization— not to mention pure energy— it requires to be any good at it. It’s enough that I’m cook and busgirl and dishwasher. I can’t do everything!”
 “Hmph. People like to sit down and have their food brought to them. I’m telling you.”
 “Maybe you want a job?” I asked, only joking.
 “Hmph! I guess so,” she mumbled, as if to say ‘that’ll be the day’.
 If Gran feels that way, there are probably others who do too. Oh well. If they want to be served, they’ll have to go elsewhere. Let them eat cake, I say.
Dawn and I sat down and wrote a list of everyone we remembered coming in here last week. It didn’t help us figure out how a couple $100 bills got into the box though. People around here are too careful with their money; even the odd ones who are loaded would never be loose with their cash like this. Dawn suggested I take the bills over to the bank when it opens in town for its one day this week. There have been a lot of counterfeit hundreds in circulation across the country, so you never know. They can have a look at it anyway.
 Can’t stay and talk, gotta get the fagioli soup on for lunch. It has navy beans in it, and takes at least at least two hours to cook. See you tomorrow.
 
Wed
I found a gal to come in and clean the bathrooms; she’s willing to come in on Fridays. I won’t be here the first time she comes. I’m off to the city to take Gran for an eye checkup. It’s been six weeks since she had her second cataract operation. Her eyes should be good as new now.
Dawn will be here running the show while I’m away. No doubt when I get back on Monday, the place will be in the shippest shape ever. Things will get Done with a capital D and I will raise my voice to the heavens in gratitude for a sister with serious work ethic.
The bank teller (there's only one; remember, Margo, Saskatchewan, is a tiny town) checked over the bills and said they’re not counterfeit. I asked her to keep the situation quiet, but to let me know if she hears of someone misplacing some money. If anyone was going to hear tell of such a thing, it would be the lady who works at the bank.
Or the police. She suggested I phone the RCMP in case someone reports a loss or theft. This is starting to look like work. Meanwhile, I am keeping a closer eye on my customers. Which of them has a twinkle in his eye? Hell, almost all of my coffee row farmers do.

Thursday
Since moving into the café, about five times a day I think I see or hear someone behind me, turn, and no one is there. I can’t help thinking rather impatiently that hey, if there is a disembodied spirit around, how about getting out here in front of me where I can see you? Why sneak around behind my back? What’s with that? It’s hard to take that kind of ghost seriously.
I have never seen a ghost; at least, not in any way I couldn’t convince myself wasn’t my imagination. I believe they exist. Enough people claim to have seen them, and some of those people are pretty darn credible. But I don’t know for sure; I’d like to see one for myself. Believing and knowing are two very different things.
I don’t suppose ghosts can conjure up $100 bills? All right, I’m reaching. But so far no one has any better ideas.
We made fettucine yesterday. Sonnyboy says he made it after I showed him what to do. The job was simple, and fast with that hand-cranked machine. It both rolls the dough and cuts the noodles. That was the part Sonny liked doing.
Speaking of nice little boys, there are quite a few bachelors around here. Lacking in the vicinity are single women. Young mothers, married women and teenage girls are represented in vigorous numbers, but the majority of footloose and fancy-free gals have relocated to the cities to find work. If you aren’t a farmer’s wife or widow, and no job at the grocery store, bank or hospital has opened up for you, you go elsewhere to support yourself. That’s why I was away for so many years. You know, out making my fortune in the big wide world.
It’s time to get busy, so I’ll leave you with a quote from The Stream Runs Fast, one of Nellie McClung’s memoirs:
“The day was so beautiful it hurt like an old tune.”

Friday
I am picking Gran up in a few minutes to head for the city. Dawn will let herself in at 9:30 to bake the muffins and mind the café. I’ve no time to write much more today, and Dawn is not one to sit at the keyboard, but I’d hate to disappoint you if you’re looking for something to read with your morning coffee.
In that spirit I’m posting a letter I wrote to a radio talk show I listen to every morning as I work here in the kitchen. The program was about yoga, and I felt compelled to comment because the guest misguidedly reinforced an attitude I have also encountered regarding psychic readings. I often do tarot readings for free — sometimes my intuition dictates that a freebie is okay  — but not always, and I don’t believe giving readings away is the only respectable way to go about it:
“In regard to accepting money for teaching yoga:
From your guest I discerned the attitude that if someone charges for services related to spiritual practices, s/he is not really sincere: s/he is in it for the money and consequently there is suspicion that something is inherently flawed in (in this instance on your show) the teacher, if not in the teaching itself.
I wonder, then, how a yoga master should more validly earn a living so that he or she can teach students either part-time or full-time. Does the master have to live in a pauper's cave and consume only biscuits and water in order to prove his purity of intention? Should she spend part of her day begging in the street? A yoga instructor is practising an important, specialized profession and has every right to be paid for doing so. He deserves to earn a decent living, and teaching yoga is an honest way to do it. Students value the education they are receiving and are willing to pay a fair price for it.
We don't expect psychiatrists or doctors to offer their time and abilities for nothing. We don't expect that of waitresses or construction workers. We don't expect it from schoolteachers or broadcasters or bakers. But your guest expects it from yoga instructors? She seemed to suggest that their skills, time, and effort — and possibly their teachings — can only be worthwhile and genuine if provided for free.
The plumber who comes to me for a tarot card reading will charge so-many dollars for the hour he spends fixing my stopped-up sink. But if I charge him for the hour I spend reading his cards, that makes me someone who reads cards for all the wrong reasons? That's neither a fair nor reasonable assumption. My time is just as worthwhile as anyone else's, including the plumber’s. The fact that I receive something in exchange does not invalidate what I do, nor should it cause any right-thinking person to cast aspersions on my motivations.
It is far more likely that I have a free hour to do the reading because I did not have to spend that hour as a cashier at a checkout counter to help pay for my groceries this week.
Your guest seems to forget that yoga instructors are people too.”

This Week

Tuesday

 Ruthie breezed in with a cardboard box yesterday morning as I was shaping bread dough and putting it into pans.

“Place looks good,” she said, setting the box on top of the deep freeze. It’s her first trip into town since she helped us paint.

“It’s about time you got here! What’s in the box?”

“Easter stuff.” She lifted out a long-eared cotton bunny clutching a woven basket, then a colourful stuffed cloth egg, and another rabbit made out of bulging wool socks. “I’ve been going crazy in my sewing room again.”

“Wow ... those are really nice,” I said, admiring them with my only parts not covered with sticky dough — my eyeballs.

“Thanks. I thought maybe you could sell them for me here.”

I put the last blob of dough into its pan. “I have the perfect place for them, actually,” I told her, washing my hands. “Put them on the window shelf in the book room.” She picked up the three dolls (or whatever they are) and carried them out of the kitchen. After brushing the tops of the loaves with olive oil I followed her.

“That’ll work,” she said, meeting me in the doorway. “You can see them from the sidewalk and the street, too.”

I glanced over at them sitting on the window shelf. “You better bring in some more though. Everyone and her dog is going to want one. Want a coffee or something?”

“Where’s the bread?” she said as I filled two mugs. Ruthie never comes over to my place without making herself a plate of buttered toast. “Oh never mind, I see it.” She opened the bag and popped two slices of raisin-rye into the toaster, then spooned sugar and cream into her coffee and headed for the window table.

I knew that’s where she’d go; always drawn to the sunlight, we two. I’ve noticed that’s the table the women seem to migrate to if it’s empty, except for this lady who’s been coming in and sitting by herself in one of the booths along the wall. Maybe she’s the one who left the Fire Cider recipe last week, because she sits there and writes the whole time. She’s not into small talk, though seems friendly enough. I’ll have to ask her next time she’s here.

Ruthie’s been a close friend for a lot of years, and there was no one in the café, so I gave her a quick rundown of the last two weeks and told her about the extra hundreds. She thought it was funny, and laughed and said “Somebody feels sorry for you!” and laughed again.

“It’s as good a possibility as any,” I smiled, “considering my cooking.”

****

Yesterday ...

Monday
Gran and Sonnyboy waited in the car late Friday afternoon while I ran into Dan’s office to drop off my tax info for last year. He had ideas.
“What kind of concert?” I wanted to know.
“A guy with a guitar. He's getting quite well known but he still does house concerts when he's on tour and my living room isn’t big enough.”
“The café only seats 28,” I said.
“More than enough, ” said he.
So the café is having a concert in two weeks. Dan is taking care of everything, but I’ll be here. I can at least make coffee.
Remember the gal from the States who came in to do the bathrooms on Friday while Dawn was here? She wants her cards read, so is coming in tomorrow after lunch.
I can’t help myself. As soon as customers leave, I have a gander in the cashbox. And I’ve started counting the money at the end of each day. If anything peculiar happens again I’ll have a better idea who was just in. Now see, that’s the beauty of smalltown Saskatchewan. You don’t guard against a thief, but you watch out for an anonymous giver.
I did call the RCMP. There’s been no report of lost or stolen money. And there haven’t been any more crazy cash contributions. But on Friday Dawn took the cashbox home and found this tucked among the bills, written in ink on two folded sheets of pale pink paper:
Fire Cider
1/4 c. horseradish root, grated
1/8 c. garlic, chopped
1/2 c. onion, chopped
1/4 c. ginger, grated
1 tsp cayenne
Take all these ingredients, mix them well, place in a jar and cover with apple cider vinegar. Leave the jar in a handy place for 14 days and shake the jar every time you have a mind to. At the end of the fortnight, strain and you have your fire cider.
    Fire cider keeps a long time without refrigeration, making it handy to have about the house. It is one of the few liniments that may be taken internally. Liniments are classed as medicines for external use only, since they are often made using isopropyl alcohol, which is poisonous when ingested. However, this recipe for fire cider has apple cider vinegar as the solvating medium, making it entirely safe to drink.
    As a linament it can be rubbed on the chest to reduce congestion and placed around the sinus areas to ease breathing, as well as on sore muscles and arthritic joints.
 To take internally, add a teaspoon of the mixture to half a cup of boiling water. You might want to add a little sweetener such as honey, which happens to be soothing for a cold and sore throat.
Nothing is cheaper, easier or finer for breaking up congestion and easing the symptoms of a cold or flu. Try just a little at first to see how strong you can take it. If you find one teaspoon too weak, just double up.
I did a little research.  
All of the ingredients are medicinal foods:
• Ginger will fight the microbes and get heavy mucous moving. It is a good anti-inflammatory and very beneficial for colds and congestion as well as for settling the stomach.
• Garlic supports the immune function and opens the pores of the skin to lower a fever.
• Horseradish will act as an antibiotic against certain strains of bacteria and is an excellent herb for clearing the sinuses.
• Cayenne stimulates blood flow and heats up the body, diminishing mucous buildup.