A Cup of Conversation, June 2014

This month next year, my lovely wife and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. That’s a quarter-century ago. It’s also the same year we started a life and business in Southern Oregon. As we grow older, more and more people ask us how we met, how we got started, how we made it all work. The story can’t be told in six-hundred words but I can give you a snapshot of what our time here must look like from history’s point of view.

Two lost souls trying to find their place in the world first find each other. With youth enough to take big risks, ties were cut binding them to the familiar. Breaking orbit of family, friends and career, they set-out to start a life together in the great unknown. Big-city beach kids head east to the Colorado Rockies looking for a mountain to call home. Winter at 8,000 feet is a different life paradigm so it didn’t take long to learn snow drifts until June was not going to work. Continuing east wasn’t in the picture so sights were set on somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Not knowing exactly where they were going, crossing back into California wasn’t an option. Both enjoyed the best that crazy state would ever have to offer and knew fate lay somewhere else.

Driving around Idaho, Washington and Oregon for weeks on-end with no more direction than the feel of a place, we found ourselves in a little B&B on the central coast of Oregon. Weary from travelling through countless small towns and the extraordinary expenses wanderlust requires, doubt began to set in. The inn-keeper told us about a place called the Rogue Valley. The old gentleman said we’d probably find what we were searching for in a small town called Ashland. We were both at a place in our journey to actually believe him.

The look on Mary’s pretty face when we cruised into the Ashland Plaza told me all I needed to know. It was April so the mountains were snow-capped with the Shakespeare Festival flags flying amongst the backdrop of a perfect spring day. With one short pass down the boulevard and back, we checked into the old Timber Lodge Motel. Within a week, Mary found a small two-bedroom Craftsman to rent right off Main Street and we were home. Mary went to work doing facials in a popular salon and as a server at nights at the original Chateaulin. Driving endlessly around the Northwest gave me plenty of time to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. The interesting thing is I could not stop thinking about coffee. The fact I didn’t even drink coffee told me I was on to something. If someone asked me what Starbucks was I might have said he was a character in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

It never occurred to me to pick up a paper and look for a job. For some reason I knew there was something else for us—so began the search by hanging-out at the only real coffee house in Ashland. Knowing nothing about coffee or retail, I figured all I needed to learn would be right in front of me. For an hour every day I’d sit at a table near the cash register and discretely record every transaction on the margins of my newspaper while nurturing a love for good coffee. During the rest of the day I drove around the valley looking for locations and learning everything I could about the coffee business. After a couple of months, I had a solid business plan with real numbers (I sat next to the cash register). In case you’re wondering, I don’t feel the least bit bad interning this way, especially after having the same thing done to us a hundred times over the decades. I still smile and shake my head every time I see it happening. By providence and the generosity of friend and mentor, Ted Vandermeer, we started GoodBean in late October, 1990. Just in time, I might add. The proverbial coffee can was empty.

In a nutshell, that’s how GoodBean began, but the greater story is our walk together, beating the huge odds of two kids weathering great storms in livelihood, marriage, family, and health. Small town life and livelihood is fraught with the challenges of fishbowl living, yet through it all we lived a good life, a rare life, a privileged life. This is where we found our faith and found healing along a difficult yet incredibly-rewarding path. Our two beautiful children were raised here and will always call Jacksonville home no matter where they abide. We don’t yet know how this story will end except as it began, together. Happy 24th Anniversary, Mary Sunshine.

Michael Kell

Michael Kell

Michael Kell is co-owner of GoodBean Coffee in Jacksonville and has started a blog at www.wordperk.com featuring more stories about small town life.

Posted May 30, 2014