A Guy for Everything
This year, we’ll be sharing a weekly column by Karla Theilen, our Neighborhood Storyteller. These stories will show what it means to live a life of intention, one where our small and ordinary, everyday actions contribute to building stronger communities.
(Source: Author.)
The other morning when I got into my car, I noticed the low tire pressure warning light. This is the first car I’ve owned that’s new enough to have such a warning light, and the first time I’d seen it come on. The air compressor at the nearest gas station was out of order and besides, it was seven degrees below zero and I had my 80-year-old father in the car with me. Turns out that part was fortuitous. “Well, we just take ‘er over to my tire guy,” my dad said, simple as that.
My father, a retired public school teacher, has lived in Brainerd, Minnesota, for 53 years, so he’s had time to forge long-term relationships with people who can get the job done. Need your timing belt replaced? Roof repaired? Do you need a pair of boots re-soled? Gutters cleaned? Taxes done? Ask my dad. He’s got a guy for everything. And if you want to know where the cheapest gas in town is, what day of the week they restock the bananas at Super One, or when half-price day is at the car wash, look no further than my dad. He’s your guy.
My dad spends much of his time at Caribou Coffee these days, a chain coffee shop next to Subway, positioned at the end of a ragtag row of stores and offices in a building that was once a shopping mall. At any point in the day, my dad can stroll into Caribou and know at least “two, three guys” (I wish I could write that the way he says it), and often a whole table of guys. A table of guys is not unlike like a gaggle of geese, or a murder of crows; a natural grouping of like things that seems to assemble innately. I’ve never heard my dad call ahead to arrange to meet the guys, and Lord knows he doesn’t text.
I did get a text message once, just once, from my father. I was dumbfounded. When I called him to ask about the text, he quickly explained that it wasn’t actually him. “I was just telling Jared what to write.”
“Who’s Jared?” I wanted to know.
“Oh, he’s my tech guy.” Evidently, Jared is someone he met at Caribou who has helped my dad with computer problems occasionally. Hence, the tech guy.
(Source: Author.)
I’ve been driving my dad to Caribou ever since I returned to Brainerd on this extended visit. Back in December, his doctor strongly suggested that, in terms of driving, maybe he should quit while he’s still ahead. Though he doesn’t complain about it much, he still grabs the key fob for his car, now devoid of battery, on the way out the door.
The other day at Caribou, one of the “young guys,” a sixty-year-old man, was telling a story of how he’d recently been to pick his own father up from the Emergency Room in a small town an hour or so up the road. Apparently this guy’s father, well into his 80s, had gone to see a “lady friend” he’d met on an online dating site, and had ended up in the ER with his blood pressure bottomed out. “Turns out he OD’d on Viagra!” laughed the poor guy’s son. I have to admit it was funny, especially after I knew everything turned out alright. When the conversation started taking on the familiar flavor of G-rated sexist humor (think Blondie and Dagwood from the comics) I wanted to clear my throat loudly, but instead just took off my coat to reveal a sweatshirt with the words Fierce Female and a picture of a tiger emblazoned across the front. Whether or not that was the catalyst, the conversation did steer back into neutral territory: The Vikings losing, the price of gas, the weather, and all the idiots out on the road.
After sitting in on a few visits at the table of guys, I could see my dad wanted to have coffee with his friends alone. It reminded me of being fourteen year old, wanting him to pick me up at the other end of the mall instead of in front of the video arcade where I hung out on Friday nights. So the first time I dropped him off at Caribou to have coffee without me, I was halfway expecting my dad to ask to be let out at the Family Dollar so he could walk the rest of the way, but it was icy, and he wanted to be delivered right to the front door.
(Source: Author.)
Sometimes I want to apologize for my dad at Caribou Coffee, for the way he recites his phone number in a sing-song way for them to key into the register so he gets his Caribou Perks, the way he makes sure the baristas see him ceremoniously put a dollar in the tip jar, and for his obsession with the temperature of his coffee (read: HOT). But apologies aren’t in order. They simply adore him just as he is. I get it. I’ve had patients before that I’ve thought were wonderful whose children have stood at the bedside rolling their eyes, mouthing exaggerated apologies for their parent’s behavior. I guess it comes down to something like the difference between looking at a snapshot and thumbing through the whole photo album.
The Caribou baristas’ service to my dad extends far beyond a hot cup of coffee. In many ways, they have been a lifeline. During the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, they would call his house to check on him. They’ve kept credit cards, gloves, wallets, and cell phones safe for him when he’s left them lying on the table. When my sisters and I started seeing changes in our father’s memory and cognition, we looked to the baristas, who shared stories and observations that validated our suspicions. The changes had not been lost on our dad’s Caribou family, either.
When I picked him up this afternoon from Caribou, he waved at his guys and shrugged his shoulders apologetically as he walked out. I could just hear him say, “Well, I’d love to stay, but my ride is here…” I felt a twinge of jealousy that he wanted to stay with them, and a blush of embarrassment that I was the killjoy.
Inside the car, he struggled with the seat belt, fumbling, frustrated. “I can’t see what I’m doing here,” he said, defeated. I reached over and clicked the metal buckle securely, a lump growing in my throat.
And then there was silence. If it were a movie, it might have been the part where sentimental music fades in, an elderly man and his middle-aged daughter driving silently through the hometown she left behind thirty years before. In a movie, it might be sad. But thankfully it was real life, and as we drove on my dad chattered away, pointing out the office of his insurance guy, the leather goods repair guy, the quilting store he’s never been in, and the gas station where a guy can still get the best deal on Snickers bars.
With regular repetition, community cleanups build something that’s lasting: a sense of commitment, pride, and place attachment.