The coffeehouse chairs

There’s a little coffeehouse in Our Town that has been intermittently responsible for much of my writing career.

It’s been in business forever, even before we moved here. It’s on Our Town’s little Main Street, across from the historic old theater and a few blocks away from the Route 66 auto shop and the Carnegie library and town bandstand. Did I mention that I live in Mayberry with more social awareness?

Sacred Grounds* has amazing coffee. It also specialized in an all-vegetarian menu that hardly ever changed, which meant I would frequently grab a lunch there of some kind of chickpea-hummus wrap and then my bloodstream would cry out for meat, because I would last about half a day as a vegetarian and perhaps 15 minutes as a vegan. I’m sorry, veggies of the world, but I’m a meatasaurus.

Still, you could get a bottomless cup of coffee for three bucks, a scone the size of your hand, and there’s a giant wall featuring an ever-changing display of artwork from local artists. Sometimes it was political, sometimes it was seasonal, usually it was abstract and sometimes it was incomprehensible, but whenever the art changed at Sacred, it was the talk of Main Street.

If this is all starting to sound like an episode of Gilmore Girls, you’re not wrong. There are reasons I am bizarrely obsessed with that show this spring.

The coffeehouse, however, was one of my favorite spots for writing, whether fiction or nonfiction. As a remote reporter, it was a fantastic spot for writing up city…