11/30/07 We have been in the new store nearly a full month and business has really picked up; all of our regulars are still with us and we are seeing a lot of new people. It's really interesting how much difference a block and a half move has made. I'm not really sure why. Some reasons probably include that we have much better parking with the parking lot across the street; we are more visible, you can see our new sign coming up highway 278; new customers say we are also more inviting with the new front, especially the three new doors. I have had some people say that they often drove by the old store and wondered what was inside, but didn't want to go in. From the outside the old store was too "alternative" looking (this is Cullman Alabama remember) while the new store doesn't give that impression. I think alternative meant hippie. Some folks have always called our store "the hippie store". They also say that the new store is more elegant (I hate that term) than the old store. The doors do that. When Garland, the owner, put in the new doors I told him that maybe he didn't understand what we were doing, that we were going to move our same old junk in and try to create the same abiance as the old place. He said that was what he wanted. Anyway, although the new place looks similar to the old, it has a better feel, even folks who before weren't comfortable with our 60's looks somehow are now. Although the main area has nearly the exact square footage as the old, it is wider and shorter and has the brick wall running down one side, both of which make it feel more warm and open. We are all pleased with how it has turned out.

11/28/07 I had a birthday today and when I came to the store this morning, on the stage was a large oil painting of an old hippie van, painted up with "love" and flowers sitting, in a grown up field. It was really good. There was no name on it, but someone had written "Happy Birthday Berkeley Bob" on the dry erase board sitting on a easle behind it. It was a really nice job. By deduction I figured out it was done by my daughter Erin and I confronted her when she got in just after 8 am. Sure enough it was her. It now hangs in a very prominant spot high above the opening between the coffee bar and the kitchen. Come by a see it. Her art talent is really blossoming.

11/27 Geri, Erin and I went to Samford University's Beeson School of Divinity in Birmingham today to hear Josh give his sermon for his Preaching course. He will graduate next week with a Master's Degree in Religious Studies and this is one of his last assignments. Samford's campus is pretty imposing, a large campus, kind of cramped, but well landscaped, located south of the city on a south facing hill off Lakewood Blvd which is near Homewood. It is a fairly exclusive school, in the liberal arts tradtion I think, rather expensive to attend, and run by the Southern Baptists--although Beeson is open to all denominations. Josh's was the only sermon scheduled. His professor, Dr Smith, his clasmates, his mother and dad and his two brothers and their families were there also. Josh's sermon was great. He has a laid back, sincere style, with a very studious and intellectual presentation. His material was, I thought, fairly controversial> He attacked (in his mild mannered way) the religious institutions which the church has superimposed over the simple message of Christ with the end result being that the gospel message is not readily evident and the church is thus not really revelent to most people in America. It was well received by his professor, who vocally punctuated positive exclamations periodically throughout the half hour sermon. We were not present for the critique as we attended a prayer service for the graduates in the chapel right after the sermon. Josh also attended the service and received his critique via notes and video. The chapel service was neat but long. The litergy started with a procession, song service, readings and responses, a sermon and then each professor prayed over each student in a revolving line before more songs and the recession. It was a good experience for me, but I couldn't help thinking that this was rarified ivory tower religion at its epitomy. Somehow I couldn't see the masses that Jesus ministered to being a part of this, or even Jesus himself being a part of this. Not to say this was wrong, we need people dedicated to studying and teaching the scriptures, but it needs to connect to mainstream populations, and maybe it does by the seminarians who are sent forth. That would be my hope.

11/21/07 Tomorrow marks the anniversary of one of those days that will alway linger in the minds of a whole generation of Americans, always there just below the surface, easily remembered. It is one of those days like 9/11 when you can remember exactly where you were and who you were with with extraordinary clarity for all of your life. Tomorrow marks the 44th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy on November 23, 1963. I was in my first forestry class at Berkeley, Forestry 101, when the news came. Shock waves rolled through the campus and the world as the events unfolded, much like they did during 9/11. JFK was a young and popular president, revered by those in my generation, just before the momentous events of Viet Nam and the Free Speech Movement which was birthed at Berkeley only a few months later. I wonder if he had lived, if the tumult and changes brought by the 60's would have occurred. I also remember very clearly the day of his funeral, it was on the following Sunday. We were trail bike riding through the hills east of Berkeley and the sunset that day was one of the most glorious I have ever seen. I remember thinking that it was a fitting climax to the life of a fallen hero. Undoubtedly the image of JFK has been tarnished somewhat over the years by the political and life style revelations that came later. But being young, idealistic,and impressionable (ah, those were the days, rather than the hard, unimpressionable cynic I sometimes am now) )I basically volunteered for duty in RVN as a Marine because of his anti communist vision and his contagious apple pie view of America , although within a month of being in country I saw how wrong it was. The shock of the assassination was mostly because he was young, vibrant, full of ideas, and seemed to have the potential to save us as a nation from the at that time all-consuming threat of global communism and was cut down in such a horrible way. All the confusion at the time, the conspiracy theories that continue to float around, and the turmoil of the following decade or so, just made the fact of his assassination all the more important in our minds. Tomorrow is also Thanksgiving and we can be thankful that our country managed to survive those sad and confused days.

11/20/07 They said it wouldn't happen, but it did. They said it wouldn't last very long, but it did. The fall color this year has been incredible, as good as I have ever seen in north Alabama. It wasn't supposed to happen because of the drought, but I guess the last few little rains were enough to stimulate it. And I have seldom if ever seen it last until Thanksgiving, but it will this year though it is fading fast. It seems that every tree that could exhibit color did, even those that normally turn brown quickly held some color. The colors also seemed brighter than normal, the maples in particular were almost flourescent. Here we don't have the kinds of color that you see in New England mainly because of the sugar maples with their flame colored hues, but our trees have their own beauty. The golden hickories, red leaved white oaks, yellow, orange, red and purple leaves on the same sweet gum tree, bright crimson red maples and even some flame hued sugar maples although not in great abundance. Red dogwoods and sumacs, yellow willow oaks, and a host of other minor but colorful players, even ferns, make it a beauty to behold. And just when you think it is over a small rain will come and the wind will blow off the faded leaves and the scene is renewed for a while longer. The view from the new coffee house is toward the railroad right of way to the west where the asphalt stops and a corridor of red maple and sweet gum brighten up the fall. It has been a joy to look up from the coffee bar and see that. Fall color is not a requirement of nature, there is no survival value in it, the leaves could just as easily curl up and die and the underlying pigments never be exposed. But I think fall color is given to us by our Creator to grab our attention and momentarily turn us away from our mundane pursuits and briefly reconnect us with nature to remember that there is more to life than us as individuals and what we do.

11/19/07 We have been incredibly busy with the new store and are not yet finished moving in. I still have work to the tea room to complete. So I have let my blog slide. I'll try to catch up.

We opened on a Thursday and the following Monday November 5th was our first open mike. Southern Living magazine came to this one to take pictures for the article to be in the February edition. We were in a frenzy almost to get everything ready especially the stage. By Monday afternoon Erin hadn't yet finished the mural behind the stage which needed to be done by open mike. She got it done at around 6:30, it is beautiful, the paint was still wet during the open mike, but luckily no one backed up against the wall. We had a great crowd in attendance and great music. Liberty Junction came as did String theory from Huntsville. Both of these are great bands, Liberty Junction does traditional and bluegrass and String Theory does traditional and folk. Seth Richardson and Susan Vaughn came up from Birmingham and folksinger Larry Woellhart came down from Huntsville too. Thanks to all those who came in from outlying areas to help make this evening a success. We had plenty of local talent also. In addition to Liberty Junction, Dennis Kahler, Carlo, Garland Talbert, Josh Brooks, Joe Carter, Meliah, Jamie, and John Mitchell performed. I opened and played some old banjo tunes as the crowd came in. It was a lot of fun. We had some great pickin out on the sidewalk as well.

I attended a Cogongrass workshop in Mobile on the 6th and 7th as a representative of the Cullman County Soil and Water Conservation District. The conference was hosted by Auburn University and was well attended (360 participants) by people from academia, federal, state and county agencies,foresters, conservationists and others interested in this mounting ecological disaster which began near Mobile and is now spreading statewide and could eventually effect the whole Eastern US. Cogongrass in an invasive plant that outcompetes every native plant in the southeast and eventually completely dominates the ecosystem it infests and over time destroys the native biodiversity. It has no redeeming value, not for forage or even wildlife habitat. It is highly flammable and can causes hot western style fires wherever it is established, killing large trees. Unfortunately it is now heavily established in Baldwin County, where it entered Alabama from Japan on packing material,and is presently spreading north, east, and west along highway right of ways, especially the interstate corridors. It has been found as close to us as Winston County. There is a massive program underway to locate colonies and wipe them out. The conference was to update us on that effort and show how we can help in it. Basically the strategy is to abandon Baldwin County, the infestation is too widespread there to do any good as it would tie up all of the available resources, and concentrate on stopping its spread elsewhere. Once it has been stopped, they will go back and try to clean up the more heavily infested areas. We will begin to see it here in a short time. I would be happy to talk to anyone who would like more info on this subject, just come by the store or email me. We all need to be concerned about this, Kudzu is nothing compared to Cogongrass.

While in Mobile Gerri and I checked out all of the coffee houses we could find. We do this everywhere we go. I keep a spreadsheet on prices for drinks, etc to insure that my prices are fair and balanced. I try to keep our prices in the median range. We also get fresh ideas on how to change or improve our place, and of course, we are checking the quality of our product when we sample others.

Larry Woellhart performed on Saturday, November 10th. This date has tremendous significance in history: it is the Marine Corps birthday and the anniversary of the wreck of the Edmon Fitzgerald. As as ex combat Marine let me say "Happy Birthday" and "Siempre Fi" to all Marine blog readers. As a folk singer and especially as a fan of Gordon Lightfoot, probably my favorite male singer-songwriter, his song "The wreck of the Edmon Fitzgerald" is a classic. of course Larry performed it along with all of his other wonderful old songs. I enjoy Larry coming it is a laid back evening of good music.

The 10th and 11th of November was also Christmas in Cullman weekend. Some of us tried to get it changed by the Chamber of Commerce to a later date to no avail. I hate thinking about Christmas before Thanksgiving, in fact I really don't like thinking about Christmas much at all. To me it is no longer a religious celebration of the birth of Christ, but a secular celebration of American materialism. I think we should have two Christmases, the commercial one and the spiritual one on different days. Maybe celebrate the birth of Christ on January 6th, which some people used to call old Christmas anyway. That way all the material stuff would be out of the way and not a distraction to what Christmas is supposed to signify, the coming of a Saviour. Anyway we had a lot of business during the Christmas in Cullman, even though we didn't make many concessions to the theme.

Open mike on the 19th was another resounding success. We had a fairly full house and 12 performers (13 if you include my warm up). We had some new faces: Johnny Puckett played his guitar and harmonica and sang Handsome Molly (I really like that song), Long Black Vail and a song about a textile mill closing, I can't think of the name. That one hit close to home. When I was very young, but old enough to remember, we lived across from the textile mill where my grandfather and uncle worked. I used to see my grandfather every day as he went to work. He worked on a loom as a weaver as I remember which was a good union job. The mill closed to move further south for cheaper nonunion labor and my grandfather and uncle were thrown out of work. He was probably 60 then and couldn't find anything else and ended up working on a coke truck loading and unloading wooden crates of soft drinks from truck to store which was very hard work for a man his age and barely supported his family. He died three years later of a massive heart attack, but we all believed that the trauma of losing his job like that really is what did him in. My uncle then became a union organizer and traveled all over the south and other places trying to organize unions. That song hit home to me. Mark McGraw who hadn't been to open mike in a while came and did a John Prine and Steve Earl song plus an original. Roger Snow came from Empire and sang the 'possum song, Dennis Kahler, Garland Tolbert, Seth Williams, Joe Carter and Carlo also performed. Abby Smith and Cheyenne Mangum, both students at Cullman High performed for the first time in their lives before an audience and did very well. It was a great night.

11/1/07 Our first day at the new store. Julie opened at six thirty and we were fairly busy when I got there at 7. When I went behind the bar to help Julie first thing I did was pour Joey West a cup of coffee. A few seconds later he told me the coffee was cold. I poured some and sure enough it was. Our pump pot maker didn't work. That meant that we had been serving cold coffee for a half hour or so and no one else had said anything. So we started making coffee with our small Bunns until we can get it fixed. This is a much more labor intensive method, making 7 cup rather than 12. Next the a/c went out and the building started to warm up. The repairman had to order a part so it will be a couple of days. Air conditioning was a problem in our old building and I certainly didn't expect it here. But at least this is a new system that can be fixed, unlike the other one. The rest of the day was extremely busy with many new faces, its funny how moving 11/2 blocks has really increased the number of our customers. We were not exactly prepared for this, our old work schedule won't work here. Our business basically held steady till quiting time.