Country Café
Nice high ceilings, big open windows, country kitchen
chairs, and tables, wooden US flag on the wall, big preamble of the Constitution
on the wall under glass, a man with wife sitting below it, he with an NRA tee
shirt on. I want to tell him it’s not just his, it belongs to all of us! Glad
to see they have not edited out the part that says ‘to promote the general welfare’.
It belongs to and includes all of us, every one of us, even those you and I don’t
like or agree with. I enjoy the space, the country feel, but the coffee is
sub-par, and the hash browns tough and too crunchy and somehow flat. I’m
reading a chapter entitled ‘Paganism’ from ‘Holy The Firm’ by Annie Dillard.
Trains have been passing by. Now sitting out front on a porch bench writing,
country songs suddenly switch to ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’. When I paid my bill there
was a stack of US Constitution booklets on the counter (the kind those
so-called militia men were carrying around at the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge), free for the taking. That’s fine. It’s the “Mine not yours” attitude I
object to! Just like their so called version of Christianity. When you walk
into someplace like this I love the country-friendly attitude you have here,
but I fit in with my blue jeans and red ball cap. I worry that they’ve lost
their soul, their Christianity has lost it’s soul, their country-friendly
attitude has lost it’s soul once the “other” walks in, or I tell them I voted
for Obama twice and love him, or that I read Annie Dillard.
Am I being unfair? Am I prejudging, judgmental? I hope so, I
hope it’s just me, but I’ve been to the town of Connell, Wa. I’ve seen this
before.
