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The Café

 While on a recent trip to the Mid-West
to be with family for Margaret's funeral,
I had time, before returning the rental car, to stop at the Nokomis Beach Coffee Café--which no one calls the Nokomis Beach Coffee Café.  It is just "The Café", at the corner of 28th Avenue and 50th Street, in south Minneapolis, a block or two east of Lake Nokomis.  It is one of the great places on earth.

Because it was late on a Sunday morning, I did not recognize a single person at the Café.  No matter!  It is there that Dennis and Mary have managed a little corner of the world so that people are welcome and can meet each other.  It is there that Mari and I have met some of the best people we know.

We do not have such a café in Tucson.  I am sure there are some, but the coincidence of location and life has not brought us to them as The Café in south Minneapolis did, or as earlier cafés did in Decorah, Iowa.  Chief among them all, in our experience, was the Café Deluxe in Decorah--now having become something else.  Magpies is where The Cousins met, and where we ate together.  But in the story of our personal pleasures, it is very hard to imagine a better place than morning coffee with friends at--let me be formal--The Nokomis Beach Coffee Café.

Nah.  The Café!

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