Simple Pleasures

"What would be fun?" I asked my shattered self, and then thought of stopping at the local bakery for  coffee and maybe a pecan roll, if they had one (these quickly sell out). I used to eat them weekly until they attached a label saying they are 670 calories apiece. So I now go a year between pecan rolls or until I can't stand the vicissitudes of life any longer.

I got there and they had one, and I also ordered a plain black coffee to be put in a "real cup," a.k.a. a ceramic cup. I once asked at a city coffeehouse to have coffee in a "real cup," and the waitress beneath her pink hair and piercings said, "We have imaginary cups too."

On every trip far from home I take a time-out to have a pastry and coffee of the local kind, and have very fond memories of a chocolate croissant and espresso at a sidewalk table in Quebec, and a light coffee with a custard pastry in a gilded coffee house in Portugal, and sitting with a coffee and pastry is always fun, a happy moment, even a peak experience, perhaps the most concentrated experience of contentment in the short time we live on this Titanic called the Earth. Come on, said my spirit. Hey, skinny one; hey, Cheerful Tearful. Enjoy it. Enjoy life.

The Underwater Bank

Parts of Eureka, Mo. flooded that never had before; Central Avenue in Old Town Eureka got dunked in 3 to 4 feet of water -- enough so that camera crews floated down the street. On the other side, facing Highway 109, and across from the post office, is a strip mall that includes an Ace Hardware, a jeweler, a weapons dealer, Rockwood Bank, and a St. Anthony's health-care office that was formerly my Medicine Shoppe #1390, sold to Walgreens but not forgotten. The saving grace was that nobody was hurt. The water quickly receded, and yesterday, a bright sunny day that belied all that had happened, I was on the strip-mall parking lot watching as workers emptied the bank of its ruined bank-type wooden desks and furniture, tore out the carpeting, and so on.