Have a cup of coffee

The Downtown Coffee Club, loosely organized in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, keeps me entertained and informed every day — and although I attend for the conversation, we are, after all, coffee drinkers.

Over the years the faces of local downtown businessmen have changed; but this keystone group has held strong at about a dozen loyal regulars who can be found drinking coffee and solving the town’s problems on any given day.

The husbands of many of the women whose hats adorned the horse drawn carriages in the Downtown Easter Parade over the years, have been participants in this unofficial association of what I consider to be some of the best informed and enlightened men in town.

Jokingly referred to by some as the “downtown mafia” and affectionately known by others as the “plaza bums”, these gentlemen have convened at several coffee counters and restaurants around the Plaza de la Constitution for about 50 years.

I first learned about them in the 1970s when they used to meet every morning at McCartney’s Drug Store on the corner of St. George and King Streets. At the time, most of the businesses and government in town were located within blocks of the Plaza, so, it was a natural place to stop on your way to the office.

There have been many occasions where if you wanted to know what was going to be in the news tomorrow, you talked to somebody in this fraternal group — today. I get a kick out of some of the disagreements voiced over coffee and the sometimes irreverent rebuttals; particularly since the folks from the Cathedral, including Father Tom Willis, usually sit behind us.

The Plaza lunch counters like McCartney’s, Woolworth and McCrory’s are all gone — but the Coffee Club has survived. The goodwill and charity of these men is the common thread that holds the club together; that, and their true love for St. Augustine.

Recently we’ve been visited by a hopeful for an upcoming Circuit Judgeship, as well as a City Commission hopeful and a candidate for the County Commission. We all get a chance to be introduced to those who would govern our community without the sound bites-n-bits constrained by two minute responses in media interviews and forums.

For all the hoopla and growth that brought out-of-towners to St. Augustine with good ideas but limited context and local experience, it’s nice to know that coffee-drinking men are still around to provide their insight.