101 Coffee Shop (Another Morning)

An elderly man exits the shop in an old fashioned wheelchair. I interrupt my writing of a kink modern Western to watch him wheel down 101. Another patron says the old man just moved from Portland and is gold mining in the area. Mining gold from a wheelchair? Got to work that in the Western.

On my way to the shop, at approximately 6:45 in the morning, near the turnout off 101 where all the surfers park, in the shoulder of the road, stood a figure with long straight brown hair past the shoulders, wearing a fur coat of some kind, and tight yellow terrycloth shorts with white piping. I didn’t see any baggage around the figure. As I drove past, I saw the face of the figure—it was a man in his 60s or 70s, clean shaven, looking a little spent.

What in the world could he (she?) be doing there at that hour on the Oregon Coast. I could only surmise he was waiting to get picked up by a trucker. I’ve got to work this character in the Western.

After the wheelchair man left, an older man enters the shop with his ukulele. He often bikes in from a nearby campground and plays for his breakfast.

He is just settling in when an older woman wearing pink yoga pants, black leg warmers, some kind of Flashdance cut sweatshirt bolts into the shop. Her hair is white and spiked in Mohawk fashion.

She strikes up a conversation with ukulele man and I learn she is driving her trailer up and down the Oregon and California coasts and serving as a mobile minister to women suffering from sexual abuse. I take a gander at her trailer parked outside and it’s stickered and painted with all manner of healing statements, affirmations and scriptures. Apparently, she pulls over in turnout with a grand view of the ocean or sets up shop in a campground, and, well, starts preaching.

She sees the man’s ukulele and said she has one her in trailer. She rushes out to get it, and a few minutes later after coffee, saying grace, and a breakfast burrito, the two are playing and singing Amazing Grace six feet away from me.

This scene will somehow make it into the Western, but it could go either way—dark or redemptive. I’m thinking the former is better for kink.