Photographs by Portrait illustration by Claiborne Cooksey
One of the great blessings of my life is being a shopkeeper. The opposite could also be argued, but we’re going with the glass half-full approach today.
Despite living in a small town close to little of anything, on any given day the world walks through my doors. I’ve practiced my Spanish and Italian with customers, seen a Rolls-Royce and ancient rusted pick-ups galore parked out front. I see babies, the elderly, the poor and the privileged, the vegans, the carnivores, the in-love and the on-the-rocks. Working behind a counter has been the best education I’ve ever had.
Mostly, our customers are fantastic. They bring me loaves of sweet just-baked bread, jars of pickles and jam, live plants and clippings from magazines. They drop off presents for my kids at Christmas and generally spoil me rotten, for no earthly reason I can discern other than the tides of human kindness run strong and swift in Water Valley, Mississippi.
One record day, I received a bottle of homemade cherry-rose wine, just-baked sweet potato bread and two live baby ducks in a brown paper bag. That was my favorite day of all time.
On the other hand, when one deals with the public, things you just don’t really want to face come up. We will skip what people are capable of doing in public restrooms and move straight to the sweet-faced elderly ladies telling me in great detail about what eating fresh figs does to their digestion. Then there’s the family that swears they eat gluten-free and then orders six bologna sandwiches on white bread, extra mayo, to go.
My favorite was the academic conference attendee who came for breakfast two years ago. I’ll never forget him.
He asked me if we had alternatives to coffee. This is a question I receive all the time, and the answer is — we do. Hot tea, choice of organically sourced loose-leaf Darjeeling, Earl Gray, green tea or the caffeine-free rooibos. He interrupted me half-way through my tea spiel.
“No, I’m not interested in hot tea,” he said. “And I can’t drink coffee. I can only drink lattes. Do you have lattes?”
I kept my best polite shop-keep smile in place, but I’m pretty sure my eyes widened. The definition of a latte is coffee (generally espresso) with hot milk. Coffee-milk. Literally.
What I wanted to say in response to the gentleman in front of me was, “That’s not a thing. You can prefer lattes to coffee, but you can’t say you “can’t drink” coffee and you can have only lattes. I can accommodate vegans and gluten-free and nut allergies and vegetarians and pescatarians and herbal tea people, but this time I stand my ground. I cannot do no-coffee lattes-only people. Because it’s ridiculous.”
But my poker face held. I said: “Why, no, sir, I’m sorry.”
“Does anywhere in town serve lattes?”
To this, I wished to respond, “Sir, we are in a rural town in Mississippi where the Internet does not reliably work. The answer is a resounding no.”
But I just said cheerfully, “maybe the Sprint Mart? They have one of those cappuccino machines.”
And I watched him shake his head and turn away, disappointed in my small town, in a place where he can order sourdough toast and the best grits you’ll ever put in your mouth and yes, plain, freshly brewed, French-market coffee in a diner mug.
I see this a lot: people so set on the one thing that they miss the truly astounding right in front of their noses.
Of course, Water Valley is changing fast. Two places now sell latte and lavender-flavored gluten-free doughnuts. So maybe the no-coffee, latte-only academic should come back. Just, please, don’t bring any friends. Unless they drink coffee as well as lattes. Because that is actually a thing.
STORY Alexe van Beuren
PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATION Claiborne Cooksey
