More Than A Cup of Coffee

Album Currently Playing: Eyes Open by Snow Patrol (it seemed appropriate)
Song: It’s Beginning to Get To Me

Last week I drove a lot. Between a retreat (remind me to tell you how good I am with a shot gun) and multiple trips to Tulsa to attempt to pick up Ang and Carter it was amazing. Each trip leaving Joplin consisted of the same routine—a swing by Starbucks to grab a venti gingerbread latte which is possibly my favorite drink right now.

Finally on Friday night their plane arrived and since the roads were primarily ice and certain destruction we decided to stay in a hotel. That was fun as we stayed in a really posh place so we could bring Luke in with us. We survived the night though and headed home on Saturday. Just as we crossed the Oklahoma-Missouri border, Carter informed us he was in need of a rest area. The first available option was a rest stop.

Now I don’t stop at rest stops often, most stops these days also allow us to get food, drink and fuel. So the rest stop is a lost stop on the American landscape for me. Something that helps me pass the miles (next rest stop 53 miles, etc). However growing up it was a favorite of my grandpa. I don’t know that I did a ton of trips with them but I remember enough to know that there wasn’t a long distance trip with the Hutchin’s that didn’t include a rest stop stop. So as I waited for Ang and Carter I walked the quiet oasis and remembered my past. Rest stops with Grandpa weren’t a place for relief, they were a part of the adventure. And the one thing that each of them had in common was him filling his thermos with coffee and buying me a hot chocolate. You know the hot cocoa that’s so hot you have to wait roughly 3 hours for it to be drinkable. My grandpa had a line for hot beverages which were his favorite “That was so hot it perked a second time on the way down.” Funny how things you’ve “forgotten” come back when you are in that element again. So I went inside and talked with the nice gentleman. I came out with a piping hot cup of coffee and a new map of Missouri. And a refreshed memory. I miss my grandpa. He was one of my first best friends and a guy who’s memories and personality sticks with me to this day. If you were to walk into my office you’d find his Bible right next to my desk. Never far and an anchor of my past and a stepping stone to my future. He’d have loved to ride with me in the summer. Little fix-its and repairs were his life after retirement.

So the rest stop provided me with a lot more that relief. It was like a mini-retreat. A pit stop on the interstate of life. And as we drove the rest of the way home I let the coffee remind me of something I’ll never forget again.