The convenience store my father owned for most of my life still sits quietly on Main Street in Hermiston. My grandfather, after years of working as a superintendent in Salinas, California, left education when collective bargaining entered it.

I don’t know what model of car they owned, but in my mind, the Thompson brothers are squabbling in the back of a baby blue Ford Country Squire, its sleek, faux bois panels, and V8 engine thundering up the California coastline toward Oregon.

After college, with a history degree in hand, my father returned to Hermiston to man the market. Dishing out daily cups of coffee and chicken strip baskets and selling 25-cent Laffy Taffy by the handful to the neighborhood kids. This is how it always was.

A new cigarette tax, a new bottle deposit. Puddles of iridescent water pooling in the parking lot after its morning hose down. Hiding in the walk-in cooler with my little brother, giggling, as our tiny hands reached out to grab the unsuspecting patron whose only wish was to procure a Diet Coke.

There was a seating alcove staged around a wall-sized corkboard. It overflowed with newspaper clippings of local high school teams and their feats of glory on the field. A golfer mid backswing; a tee-ball team; a running back mid rush; a guard, arms outstretched in what can only be assumed was a three-pointer that found its way to the hoop. Even a few pictures of the proprietor’s daughter swimming butterfly. A shrine to athleticism.

Tending to the shrine, huddled around three small tables emblazoned with Coca-Cola insignia, were the Coffee Boys. If my father was the priest conducting daily mass from behind his hot rack alter, these were his acolytes. These days, they’ve since dispersed. Only mirages of a bygone era: One of pre-Starbucks, where the coffee was brewed two hours ago, consumed black and from a styrofoam vessel.

Over the years the Coffee Boys would occasionally band together to start collections for local charities like The Agape House, or help with spaghetti feeds — small-town fundraisers before the advent of GoFundMe. They were not intentional do-gooders. There was no charter document stating their objectives, no bylaws ruling their little organization. Yet, somehow something good often came from this group of men as they sipped their styrofoam encased coffees.

A few years ago now, I was in The Store the morning after an early snowstorm hit the Columbia Basin. Temperatures had dipped into the mid-twenties, and despite the icy road conditions, the Coffee Boys were in their self-assigned seats, my father leaned over the counter as usual. The conversation had just shifted from the weather to football when in walked a man who appeared to have fallen on hard times.

“Morning,” my father welcomed him and turned back to discuss how the local hometown heroes were heading toward the state playoffs.

Over at the sink, the man stood warming his ungloved hands in running water, steam wafting from his fingers. Afterward, he approached my father and asked for two plastic bags, which he then tied over his wet and weathered tennis shoes.

It’s quite cruel that my mind cannot recall which of the Coffee Boys asked the man to take his seat just as he was heading out the door, and instructed him to wait for his return. Like Gandalf departing Helms Deep, we looked on as he slowly pulled from the parking lot, snow squelching from underneath the tires. Dad poured the newcomer a cup of coffee and offered him a plate of biscuits and gravy which he accepted with many thanks. He ate silently and languorously. The small hand on the clock that stood sentry ticked by. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes. Then, the Coffee Boy reappeared — this time with a backpack. With a flourish of prestidigitation, he extracted a brand new pair of work boots and a bag of unopened socks. A rabbit from a hat.

“They’re yours,” Coffee Boy said, “I think they’ll fit okay.” The man took the shoes, excused himself to the restroom, and emerged with the brown leather boots.