At The Coffee Shop, One of Those Neat Portraits of Humanity...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Special to The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - These days, Sunday mornings here come with the usual overcast skies ahead of the afternoon scorch, the worst of it being a heavy dose of high humidity. It makes one head indoors by mid-morning, but it also makes one look for slices of life worth spending a few minutes on, like the doings of other Human Beings battling the same elements.

At Starbucks, my coffee shop of choice, outings for a cup or two or three dawns with a gathering of early-rising friends. Linda is there, as is Marco and Allen (the budding novelist), the pastor and sometimes Kathy or Jessica or a woman we know as the bodybuilder. And then there's Jimmy.

Jimmy is in his late-80s. He arrives aboard a 10-speed bicycle equipped with an aluminum water container and an air pump strapped to the frame of his bike; that, and a small leather pouch behind his seat, presumably for repair tools. Jimmy wheels in from somewhere along N. 10th Street. We watch him navigate the busy Starbucks parking lot, slicing there between SUVs and sedans and pickups. He wears the outfit: helmet, backpack, windbreaker and heavy hiking tennis shoes.

"Good morning, Jim," I like to say to him as he walks in.

"It's Jimmy," he says in return.

He acts bugged, but he isn't. When he wants to, Jimmy is a sociable dude. Sometimes he stops and says something to us, like this or that about local traffic, but mostly he comes to do his business. That consists of this: Jimmy walks to the counter and then reaches down to a metal stand holding the day's New York Times. He takes it and walks outside to the tables set under a canvas overhang. There, he reads it in less than 15 minutes before walking it back to the stand, to place it back in its place.

This morning, I watched him as he went through his ritual. But this time, Jimmy folded the Times and slipped it into his aging backpack. He'd not paid for it, although that doesn't bother me. Not a bit. My feeling is all newspapers should be free for anyone under 21 and over 70. Who'd take issue with that?

I watch as Jimmy climbs aboard his bicycle and moves toward N. 10th Street. He stops for passing traffic and then, when it's safe, he proceeds across the street toward a Whataburger. I imagine him reaching into his wallet to pay for a sausage and egg sandwich and wish I could text a message to the burger joint's counter help to say I'd be right over to to pay for Jimmy's breakfast.

No reason. Jimmy's just a cool old coot...

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