Archive for December 4th, 2008

Sometimes I want to go to a locally owned coffee place with really good bacon sandwiches.

When I do, I try the Trail Lake Exit of the 20, one block south, on the right, in the shopping center next to CVS. At the end of a strip mall is a tiny storefront labelled TCU: the Coffee Urn.

One morning a few weeks back (I’m using the present progressive tense in memory of Damon Runyon) I’m in search of the human side of Fort Worth, so I stop at The Coffeee Urn. It’s just a few doors down from Starbucks, but their approach and clientele are completely different.

This place seeks to fill the void of locally owned and operated eateries in Southwest Fort Worth. As I come in to the sounds of an overhead blower, I see that a mural on the back of the restaurant showing a scene of Fort Worth before the roads were paved. It’s impressionistic, simple, but effective, making the assertion that “we are in the West here,” instead of the usual coffee bar claim which is more like “walk through these doors, and you are in Europe.” The honesty is charming. The coffee is cheaper than Starbucks. Three flavors today: Cowboy Blend, Cinnamon Hazelnut, and French Roast.

At the tables, two guys are playing chess. Two other guys are reading the newspaper. It’s very quiet. I hear the slamming door on the dishwasher, and then the sound of water washing around and plates being scraped. Someone sneezes. “I’m not worried about your knight,” says a bald guy at the chess table, who’s got one of those super size earings like the cannibals wear in movies. The guy he’s playing has a tattoo on his arm. They sound like rough characters, but they’re not. I can’t explain how I know this.

A new guy comes in. “How are you doing,” he says to the counter man.  “Can you do something for me?” He sits at the bar. I can’t hear all of the request, but it has something to do with scrambling eggs with jalapenos. 

Talk at the newspaper reading table turns to a guy who says he found a full grown box turtle in a parking lot. The animal had a number 6 painted on it. The guy took it home, but it got out and wandered away in a week or two. He assumes it knew what it was doing. 

“Check,” says a chess player. 

Talk lingers over an ’89 something or other one of them has parked outside. This is not the car I noticed. That would be the 60’s Impala. Now the chess game is over. The chess players share a high five. The winner laughs, the loser says “you always way pull that … Geez!”

The effect of all this local color can only be felt, not seen, and is probably lowering my blood pressure and respiration. I feel like these guys, if someone fell over in convulsions, they wouldn’t just help them, they would be concerned. In Starbucks, you feel like there would be at least one person who would say, “Can you take of this? I’ve got a meeting.”

Deciding to stay longer, I order soup and a sandwich — the aforementioned bacon with vegetable chicken soup. The bacon is thick and crisp just like I like it, the whole wheat bread simple but tasty, the soup chunky and homemade. Overall, I feel like this must be what the Old Fort Worth was like, or what a thousand small towns in Texas used to be like, where you could stop at the local diner, get a plate of chow, talk to people, and then turn back towards the door, ready to face whatever came up, fortified with a type of communal human energy that’s pretty hard to find these days. 

The Coffee Urn, 5018 Trail Lake Drive, Fort Worth 76133, (817) 926-7660. Coffee, Burritos, Omlettes and Combos, 7 to 2 Monday Through Saturday.