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The Safehouse Story

So many companies these days are named after the owner or a handful of initials, which can be fine, but Safehouse Coffee and Tea is not most companies. What’s more, the owners are not most owners. They’ll tell you the story in their own words.

Some years ago, I was ramblin’ across the states looking for something – something elusive and always a town or so ahead of me. I was on a trail of some kind and making lousy time. What started in Little Five Points, Atlanta, made stops in Tallahassee, Athens, Memphis, Wichita, Manitou Springs, Eugene, San Francisco, and L.A. Of the many places along that trip, I had an eight day layover in New Orleans. A road buddy of mine was going to meet me there in his 1965 Dodge Dart and we were rolling on to parts west – start a business of some kind in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately for me, what was supposed to be a day or two turned into over a week due to an uncontrollable catch on his end.

Now, if you’ve never been past the glossy storefronts, bars, and restaurants of the French Quarter, then you have missed much of the cultural and sociological structure that makes the commercial face of New Orleans what it was, and since rebuilding has made progress, what it is again. Just a few short blocks from Bourbon Street, is the rest of New Orleans that lies just within the blind spot of most anybody that’s not from there. For trail walkers and ramblers, there are certain cities and towns that just don’t like passers-through. New Orleans, or at least the affluent areas, is one of those towns. At that time, being picked up there for vagrancy meant a $100 fine and/or ten days in jail. That means no sleeping on the park benches or in the alleys – no loitering in public places. In the times when a town like this cannot be avoided, one learns a few valuable skills. Call it a hustle - call it a street skill - whatever you call it, if you’re on the trail long enough, you learn to pick up an interesting or at least amusing talent that gives you the ability to loiter without looking like you are loitering. Some guys play an instrument. Others make origami objects out of local grasses and leaves. Street magic, juggling, incredibly witty banter, painting – you have to have something. Having kept myself in gas and cigarettes in college by street performance, I should have been able to flourish in the environment, except I had ditched my guitar a few stops back. Carrying the guitar slowed me down, but now it was all that didn’t stand between me and hungry days. And so I was relegated to spending my days down at the wharf with whatever kids got stranded in town the last time Phish or Widespread Panic came through – the problem with that was they were thieves and that would bring heat I didn’t want, so I did what I could to keep my distance when they started relieving people of their wallets. My nights were spent in a haze of half-wakefulness, heel-toeing it up and down the Quarter like some semi lucid escapee from a sanitarium. After four or five days of this (you start to loose your concept of time when you’re that sleep and nutrition deprived) I found myself daydreaming. I realized that I was trying to gauge in my mind how much force it would take to knock someone out with a brick with out inflicting any lasting damage. See, I didn’t have the sleight of hand it takes to be a pickpocket, and I had to get some food soon. Most towns and cities have an extensive network of food pantries and soup kitchens, but then some, like New Orleans, had none unless you were on the outskirts of town – it helps keep down the vagrancy if the vagrants don’t have anything to eat. I was repulsed at the thoughts in my head and I ran from there and ended up at the wharf again. That night marked the birth of my loathing for vodka as I shared a bottle of the cheapest gut-rot that the jamband refugees could buy with that day’s take. Half of them begged and half of them lifted wallets, but I couldn’t bring myself to do either. When the bottle was passed my way, it didn’t occur to me that I hadn’t eaten in days and I threw back a big swig… and immediately lost it violently onto the rocks that lined the Mississippi River through that section of the city. I gave them their swill back and got up to take another lap around the Quarter. New Orleans is a rich environment at night – the spicy exotic smells of delicious island and bayou foods cooking, the rainbow of lights painting the buildings and sidewalks, the comforting ooze of jazz spilling out of dimly-lit doorways like waves of warm honey flowing into the street – it’s pretty magical, I imagine, if you’re not starving and fatigued. As I made my way up Bourbon Street with my big, aluminum frame backpack and bedroll for the hundredth time that week, my eye caught something that seemed out of place. All the signs are meant to grab you by the face and make you buy whatever they have, but this was a small wooden sign – handmade, by the look of it. It was smaller than it should have been and hung at the top right corner of the doorjamb of this smallish bar. It said, “Patrons may enter with or without money”, and there was a symbol on it – a circle with an X in the middle. In my muddled brain I thought I remembered reading something about places like this, where you could go in and stay awhile even if you couldn’t buy anything, but I couldn’t place it so I slid my pack down and carried it in in my right hand, just barely above the ground. I turned towards the bar to my right and stopped when the barkeep looked at me. He was grey and craggy and seemed to look past my shaggy face into my past. He looked at the pack in my hand and back at me and then nodded – first at me and then to an empty barstool at the dark, far end of the bar. I walked across the room, weaving myself and my pack through the crowd, as inconspicuously as I could and sat down. I put my pack under my feet and wrapped the shoulder straps around one of them. I put my face in my hands and fell apart on the inside for a moment – having a place where I wasn’t in danger, even for a few minutes, made me almost more emotional than I could conceal. When I lifted my head, there was a bowl of bar nuts and a glass of water in front of me. Tears almost ran down my face and I turned to the barkeep and nodded my reserved gratitude – he didn’t acknowledge. I started on the nuts slowly. Having had an empty belly for days before, I knew that if I attacked them, they would attack me back. The salt made my mouth so dry I couldn’t even chew, so I took my time alternating between the mixed nuts and what was probably nasty municipal water, but it tasted like a pure Colorado spring to me. After a few minutes, a couple at the bar got up and left, leaving half a plate of uneaten fried onions. Barkeep picks them up along with several empty mugs and glasses and walks down to the sink, puts the glasses and mugs in and slides the plate to me – never looking at me. In fact, he did not acknowledge my presence again that night, but by the time I left, I had had a full meal. I left with my head on straighter than it was before and over the next few days, I met some friends that made the place bearable until my buddy rolled in and we both rolled out.

I never forgot that night, the barkeep, or that sign and years later I was on the internet and came across a website about old hobo symbols and what they meant, and there right on the screen was that circle with an X in the middle and the caption beneath it: “A safe place to get a meal. Usually a home or business owned by a former hobo.” Now, I have my own business and that symbol is part of our logo so that I never forget where I have been and so that I look past the face of everyone who walks in my door. Come see me – I might have something for you.

Hunt Slade
Safehouse Coffee and Tea
921 West Taylor Street
Griffin, Georgia 30224
770.228.6611
www.safehousebeverage.com or Safehouse Coffee and Tea @ Myspace