| In
towns across East Texas, big and small,
there’s usually a place where elderly men gather each morning to have a cup or
two of coffee--and solve the world’s problems. Well, maybe some of the problems.
The other morning, Doris and I stopped at McDonald’s in Gilmer
on the way back to Lufkin from
Mount Pleasant.
And,
there they were--Gilmer’s elderly coffee
drinkers, clustered around a table in the corner, attacking the world’s biggest
issues with enthusiasm. Kidding them, I asked if they represented the collective
wisdom of Gilmer.
“Nope,” said
one of them, “here, the women have all the wisdom; we just pretend we do.”
The
morning coffee drinkers in other East
Texas towns aren’t as truthful as those in Gilmer.
And
they don’t usually go to McDonald’s for their coffee.
In Lufkin,
we once had a bunch of men who went to a local feed store in the downtown area
for their morning coffee, but they eventually moved to a truck stop cafe until
the cafe closed its doors. I haven’t checked to see if they have a new home, but
I suspect they do.
I wondered why Gilmer’s
wise men went to McDonald’s until I found out the coffee was free after the first
cup, not only in the morning but in the afternoon when the wise men came back
for a second session of world problem-solving.
McDonald’s is probably
smart by hosting the wisdom table. The restaurant not only sells food to the coffee-drinkers,
but the manager can probably call on any of them if he needs a problem solved.
After all, if the wisdom table is willing to tackle the world’s problems, a plumbing
problem ought to be a cinch. The
morning we stopped at the table, the conversation was going full speed over the
outcome of the presidential race. Although East
Texas is normally Democratic, I suspect that most of the men at the wisdom
table voted Republican. But
one of the coffee drinkers admitted that Barack Obama was smart, eloquent, and
had two cute daughters. “Yep,” said another coffee drinker, “and he has a nice
tan, too.”
I wanted to stick around and see if the wisdom table could
solve some of my problems.
But the highway beckoned, the radio was playing
a song by Willie Nelson and I knew there were other wisdom tables down the road.
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