Because the general store was open every day of the week, Mr. and Mrs. Storekeep had two home addresses.
One was the pleasant apartment above the store that made getting to and from work especially easy. The second allowed an occasional escape from the vicissitudes of retail life, because they also had a marvelous little cabin in the woods, somewhere in the back of Madison County. This week there had been no escape because even to the uninitiated, politics seemed to rule every day.
This day they were a bit late in opening the store, and at 6:10, as the area began to wake up for a Monday morning, they found Curmudgeon tapping his booted foot, and showing signs of general agitation as he almost fell over Mr. Storekeep as he unlocked the front door.
“Where have you been?” asked Curmudgeon, recovering from his stumble and wending his way to the rear of the store where Mrs. Storekeep was busy brewing coffee and setting some fresh donuts on a tray that sat next to a number of personalized coffee mugs.
“We’re sorry!” they both said in unison.
And as Curmudgeon opened his mouth, in much the same rhythm, the front door opened and Cityfella, accompanied by his brother-in-law who was visiting from Atlanta, walked in.
“Well,” said Curmudgeon, “I have something to report, and both are important to the continued health of the society.”
Knowing the best way to handle this particular situation, there were coffees and donuts all around, and four people sat ready to listen.
“First,” said Curmudgeon, “the other day when I took my sister to the hospital in Asheville, I was waiting for her when she took some tests, and the only magazine not in use was a dog-eared copy of an HGTV Magazine. As I thumbed the pages my eyes fell upon a section called “Help Wanted” and the first column was entitled “…to reheat your morning coffee?” The answer was that doing such might be a tempting thing to do but the magazine advised against it because the longer you kept your coffee in the same cup, the better the chance it might be contaminated by – and I quote here – ‘dirt, dust, or even the errant fly.’ Then the writer made reference to such activities being more risky if the coffee is diluted with milk or a creamer!”
He paused for effect and the attendant four continued to nibble on donuts and sip coffee, but Mrs. Storekeep stopped to look at her cup, then asked: “Why?”
“Because,” Curmudgeon continued, “Not only would reheating dairy cause bacteria to grow but it could also help in curdling the milk, which in turn would upset your stomach. Then if you continued in the warming activity, the taste of the coffee would suffer from such heat and begin to taste bitter.”
“First,” said Cityfella, as he looked about to note the lack of dust in the store’s air, “that’s one of the silliest things I’ve heard in a long time. It originates from under-paid magazine staffs looking for filler, ready to pass on some truly ridiculous information in order to get copy. The only lesson to learn is to avoid reading magazines that think the only signature of success in today’s home decorating schemes is having a ‘wet bar’ in the backyard. What was the second thing that bothered you?”
“The second item didn’t bother me but when I read Gail Collin’s column in one of last week’s issues of The New York Times, I began to laugh so hard I almost couldn’t stop. She wrote about the latest scientific study concerning a South African research team publishing an article about Antarctic fur seals trying to have sex with penguins. It was her opinion that such activities might make Americans feel better about politics, not to mention Congress, and the general state of the nation, because ‘…at least we’re not being governed by seals.’”
After the laughter died down, Mr. Storekeep muttered to nobody in particular: “Let’s hear it for the seals.”
Peter Loewer has written and illustrated more than twenty-five books on natural history over the past thirty years.