I wanted to write about coffee-klatches, but I have seen the
second half of that combo spelled different ways, and I wanted to know which
was correct. In answer, it seems that
the English-language klatch sprang
from klatsch, a typical German word mucus-filled
with seven letters, only one being a vowel.
Either spelling refers to an informal conversation.
Early in my air force years, I participated in a
coffee-klatch with a bunch of other impoverished enlisted men. At the mess hall, coffee was free, but the
mess hall was not open all hours of the day and night. Right across the street, however, was a
cafeteria that was open round the clock and charged a nickel a cup. Refills weren’t free, but at a nickel a cup we
could get a lot of caffeine-fueled talk for just a few coins.
A nickel a cup! Thoughts of
the good old days come back to me every time I pony up two bucks or so at a
place that employs a barista. Does coffee
cost so much because of an Italian word?
We would gather, a half-dozen of us or so, at the cafeteria
after dinner and sit there talking for hours, occasionally till past
midnight. We were in our early twenties,
most of us aircraft mechanics. There
were four topics of conversation: women,
cars, airplanes, and how screwed up the air force was. Early on we made a rule that we would not
talk about religion or politics. Why we
decided this I don’t know, but no one complained about it, and we all abided by
it.
There was a lot of give-and-take in the talk, a lot of
good-natured kidding, and a lot of laughter.
The coffee-klatch was our entertainment.
I was somewhat misplaced.
I knew nothing about women, and I didn’t own a car. I knew enough about airplanes to know when to
use a wrench and when a screwdriver, and I didn’t know whether the air force
was screwed up or not because I had nothing to compare it with. I am not a talkative person, so I generally
sat there quietly having a good time.
One night Pat took me aside.
We knew each other by last names or parts of last names. Pat was Patrick, a staff sergeant
four-striper, and chief clerk in the orderly room. He was our klatch’s unofficial but
acknowledged leader.
“You know something, Pax,” he said. “You hardly ever say anything, and you’re the
smartest one of the bunch.”
That was the nicest compliment I have ever received. It was totally unexpected. And it was a surprise: I had been considering myself to be a bump on
a log, but now I realized that I could impress people just by keeping my mouth
shut.
A lot of time and gallons of coffee have passed since then,
and these days I envision my insides coated a slimy brown and my nerves
cauterized by caffeine. I also envision,
and miss, a coffee-klatch like that first one back in the air force.
Something happens to men as we grow older, or at least
something seems to have happened to the men I know. Gone is much of the humor of youth; also gone
is the willingness to listen, replaced by the urgent need to say something, anything. ("Listen to me damn it! I might die any minute!")
All too often the give and take of
conversation is gone; in its place is the competitive serial monologue: One man talks for a while about something,
then another man talks, and so on. It’s
sort of like kindergartners’ show and tell, which among teachers is also known
as lie and brag.
I also wonder if any old progressives are around. The men I hear are all too often merely
repeating something they heard from Rush or Sean or some other media mouthpiece
who earns a living by preying on the fears of naïve Americans.
I don’t like my approach here because I’m only one
voice. For all I know there could be a
jillion good coffee-klatches around, and I just haven’t found one. That leaves me holding fast to what I learned
because of Pat decades ago: I try more and
more to say less and less.
Finally, some of the men I listen to should keep in mind a
remark often attributed to Mark Twain: “Better to remain silent and be thought
a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
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