The Coffee Pot at the Feed Store

Dale

Sorensen Feed and Supply sits directly across Main Street from the cafe. If you stand at the cafe’s front window, you look straight into Dale’s front window, and the other way around.

Dale Sorensen is 71. He took the store over from his father in 1979. His wife, Joan, died three years ago of a cancer that went quick, and since then Dale has opened up at 5 AM every day of the week, because, as he puts it, he is not sleeping anyway and the cats need feeding.

I walked over on Sunday afternoon after church. He was sweeping out between the pallets of layer feed and mineral tubs, the radio playing the Vikings game low behind the counter.

“Dale,” I said, “can I ask you a favor that is going to sound strange?”

He leaned the broom on a stack of dog food and listened while I told him.

I told him about the two shifts and the new concept and Harlan’s sugar. I told him I did not want to sell anything or run the cafe down. I just wanted to make coffee, free, on his counter, at five in the morning, for whoever wanted some.

Dale thought about it for a long time. That is how Dale thinks. He rubbed his jaw and looked out his front window at the cafe, the green booths dark on a Sunday.

“You’d want to watch the food part,” he said finally. “You start cooking eggs in here and the county will have something to say about it. I’ve had the inspector in for the pet treats.”

“No food,” I said. “Just coffee. Like the bank does. Like the tire shop.”

“Coffee’s fine,” Dale said. “And if I happen to buy a couple dozen donuts from the bakery up the highway and set the box out on my own counter, that’s my business.”

Then he said, “Hang on,” and went down the basement stairs behind the office. I heard him moving boxes for a while. When he came back up, he was carrying a big steel coffee urn against his chest like a baby.

“Joan’s,” he said. “Forty cups. She took it to every funeral dinner at the church for thirty years.”

He set it on the counter and wiped the dust off the lid with his sleeve, slow and careful.

“It’s been sitting down there,” he said, and did not finish the sentence.

I put my hand on his arm. We stood there a minute. Then he cleared his throat and said he would find an extension cord that would reach.