The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

The GossipBox Café, on these dragged-out miserable and muddy days between winter and summer, packs the coffee crowd in at ten and two. Let’s listen in on these coffee-cup ten o’clock farmers:

“Who’s buying coffee?”

“If’n the sun don’t come out today, I’m calling the auctioneer and puttin’ the whole shebang on the block.”

“No, don’t do that. Call the president and tell him to fix this. He’s messed everything else up, maybe his luck’s due to change.”

“I can’t stay long. Gotta get home and grease the plow, get’er ready.”

“You grease that one more time, it’ll be so slippery you won’t be able to hitch it up.”

At this point, someone said they thought they saw the sun come out, and everybody in there rushed over to the east side of The Cafe, to the big picture glass window. It turned out to be a false alarm. They all went back to their places, and started waving their cups in the air for a refill. Even a false alarm was better’n nothing.

The waitress burst out of her station with a pot of coffee in hand, and some sugar cubes in the other. She was like an Arabian race horse out of the starting gate. You had to deliver fast around here or the crowd turned ugly. Sweet Coffee addicts couldn’t be trusted to behave themselves when they needed a fix.

They all waved for coffee because they were pretending that was how they did it at home, with the little woman. The waitress played along with the ruse, pretending this was how she did it at home, taking care of her hubby’s every wish. Playing along. Maybe most of life boils down to playing along.

Most men in there knew the truth, though. Knew that if they took the waitress home, next thing you knew, the bathroom needed remodeling or that old sofa had to go. Ah, wishful thinking. Almost as good as hot coffee drank from a saucer through a sugar cube.

All of a sudden, there was another rumor of sunshine, and the crowd once again flocked over to the window, only to once again find it a false alarm. What if it never came out until June, they all thought. What’d we do to deserve this, they all thought.

“I just read that the University said most farmers get out into the field two or three days late,” said someone.

The restaurant grew as quiet as a funeral home after dark.

Someone else, who’d been to junior college, said, “You know, it turns out planting time and higher yield don’t necessarily remain within a direct exponential relationship with one another, so that’s why sometimes you want to be late.”

To themselves, the older farmers thought to themselves that college was gonna be the death of farming, that if many more young folks went to college, the world would probably starve to death.

“Does that mean it is, or it isn’t, too early to plow?”

“Yup.” Said one.

They were all sure it was too early. Pretty sure. 

“Way too early,” said a voice out of the crowd.

The college guy tipped back the remains of his coffee and said, to no one in particular, “Well, I’m going home and try it.” Then he paid and left.

“Way too early,” said a voice.

“Too cold,” said another.

“He probably can’t find his tractor less’n he has a computer to help him.”

“Ground temp-a-cher’s all wrong.”

Suddenly, there was a stampede for the cash register. The waitress took her time. They’d be back this afternoon. Heck, even she knew it was too early. They were just tired of coffee-cup farming, and needed a bit of the real thing. Go out to the shed, check the oil in the tractor, make sure the tires were still up on the disc, check for broken tines on the chisel plow.

She’d seen it happen every spring like this. She knew another reason they’d be back—because all of their rural septic systems were froze up. Come to town to use the bathroom.

Besides, the slower she was now, the more likely someone would just throw a dollar bill on the table, leaving her the only tip she’d likely get out of these parsimonious tightwads. 

What was that saying about farmers? Oh, yeah: They come to town with dirty overalls and a dollar bill, and don’t change either one.

“Gawd almighty,” someone said, “Look out there. I think the sun’s gettin’ ready to bust through.”

“Hurry’er up up there,” said a desperate voice from the rear of the line, “Lord! All’s I got is a two-dollar bill.”