December 4 2008 - Coffee in Monticello

I was visiting my sister at the end of the summer at her job in camp. But her camp happened to be located in Monticello, NY, where we spent many summers and my parents used to own a house (my father still has a house near there in Swan Lake NY).

We’re driving down the hill on route 42 and I see all these unfamiliar restaurants. One I point out is a coffee place – my sister says she isn’t familiar with it but that there is another really good coffee place ahead. We go through the traffic light and look to the left, and there is a restaurant called Jeff’s (which used to exist) – I asked my sister if it had reopened but she didn’t think it had – we looked inside and it looked like they were training staff. We pass the coffee place and my sister says my mother loves that place (my mother died in 2003).

Then we stop into what looks like an indoor/outdoor cantina that has pool tables outside but under a roof that had like that straw hanging down like in the Caribbean. We put our name on the list to go play pool, but then she decides she wants to leave. I tell her I need to use the bathroom and when I go to the bathroom, I run into a guy who I knew in high school and recently reconnected with on Facebook. We man hug and I tell him I will e-mail him when I am headed down to Florida (where he now lives) in January or February to visit my father and his wife.

Then the alarm goes off.