Old Home Café: The Next Generation
By Edward Floden, based on characters and situations created by William D. Fries, Jr.
Episode XXVII: To Sleep, Perchance
(Originally published in The Legend-News of 2003 November 15.)
Dreaming is the mind’s mechanism for dealing with the stress of life, and Jon Bach needed a lot of dreaming. Since he’d moved to Pisgah and reopened the Old Home Café, he’d been working 18-hour days. If he was lucky, he’d take a nap in the early afternoon when business was slow after the lunch crowd had left, but lately he hadn’t been lucky.
But tonight was different. The time was only 6 P.M., and he was done for the night. After far too long, as he realized, Jon had finally hired a night manager, someone to start at 6 and close up shop at 11. So tonight, Jon was planning nothing more than a lot of sack time.
[This part of today’s story is intentionally blank. I could describe Jon’s dreams of grandeur — his idea for turning Pisgah into a C.W. McCall theme park, the tourist-attracting World’s Largest Pile Of Loose Change, the desire for a new Power Macintosh G5 — but the poor guy really needs his sleep. Maybe next time. — Ed.]
At 4:30 A.M. the clock-radio snapped to life and Jon awoke to the farm report. He yawned and scratched, and decided that he’d slept well. Then he shuffled into the bathroom and took a shower. He had a cafe to open at 5.
Next: The Night Before Christmas