By Kathryn Jeffers

I bought the old Iverson building with my mate Paul in hopes of transitioning out of the jobs our college degrees had bought us. Little did I know it would become a decision that had more to do with survival than commerce.

The building, circa 1867, sits at the southeast corner of the only four-way stop in Amherst, Wisconsin. It housed the Amherst Coffee Company when we bought it, a place to get a decent latte that offered a venue for local musicians. On the day we went to sign the note at the bank, my friend Terry asked me if the purchase was a good business decision. Before I could answer, he shot me a look.

“It might have been cheaper to quit drinking coffee than to buy a whole coffee shop just to get a cup strong enough for the way you like it, don’t you think?” he asked.

Jesus, I thought, what are we doing? This isn’t Paris, or Greenwich Village. It’s the village of Amherst, the draw to which cannot be credited to the charm of place. It isn’t some haven of architectural bliss, rich in history and beveled glass storefronts. Sure, there’s a millpond that spills into the Tomorrow River thanks to the old dam in the center of town. But it’s hardly what one would call a crowd-puller.

We’re barely a hamlet, but we think we’re a city when it comes to being cool.

Wise or foolish, once we signed those papers, it was up to Paul and I to make a go of the coffee shop. The place would require things as soon as we took over,
starting with a new name; the old one left with the previous owners. It was much too dark; a bank of windows would have to be cut in for natural light. Not to mention that it had no kitchen yet.

Our vision for the place was pulled straight from the traditional European cafés of the 19th century. I re-read Hemingway and Gertrude Stein to learn what “done” was supposed to look like. We spent hours pouring through print catalogs to look at every café scene the Impressionists had painted.

In the end, Monet, Degas, Lautrec, Renior, Pizarro, and Van Gogh would all be called into service as part of the design team. The brushes of the masters told stories of café life, of people meeting to debate ideas, write, paint and make music. It was elegant sustenance combined with history; ambiance with hospitality. Art and intellect and beauty made this café life famous.
It was a way of life that we wanted to bring to our small village.

We divided up the tasks. I set about redesigning the building back into the style of the Mission Period. Paul wrote a business plan.

We were each other’s think tank and sounding board for the multitude of decisions. I chose the café scenes to be framed for the walls and scoured three counties for old tin, wainscoting and stained glass. Paul trained to be a barista at a coffee shop owned by our friends Bob and Anne in Stevens Point, 12 miles to the west.

We went to Big Sur, California, and drove up Highway 1 all the way north way to Mendocino, eating in every small outdoor cafe, where he planned the menu. I refinished French-paned windows to build into the kitchen walls. We rented the movie Under the Tuscan Sun to see how Frances Mayes managed her fear when she realized what she had gotten herself into by buying that old house in Tuscany.
We were ready. And then three weeks before the carpenters were scheduled to execute the redesign and put in place all that equipment Paul had spent months researching, he was killed in a car accident.
What do I do now?
The previous owners offered to buy the building back from me, but I said no. I hadn’t yet figured out that you can’t keep a man alive simply by completing his unfinished projects.
When people tell the grieving not to make any major decisions too quickly, they likely don’t realize that to not decide is also a decision, a luxury that I didn’t think I had.

At the memorial service held at the coffee shop, Bob presented me with Paul’s “certified barista” certificate. Then he told me that unbeknownst to me, they had made a pact with each other that if anything happened to either of them they would cover each other’s shops until things could be stabilized. 
Succession planning before we even made our first espresso. I took it as a sign.

We closed for three months while I worked with the carpenters. Most days, too numb
to feel, I would work until I was too tired to think, and then go home to the empty house high up on the ridge, deep in the country, and miles from the main road. At night I worked on framing the café scenes, or tinkered with one of the Mission lamps that would light each table. 
I could only sleep a few hours a night those first months so I’d get up in the darkness to stoke the fire, sit in Paul’s chair and stare out at a perfect view of Orion in the winter sky. Then I’d turn on the small pink lamp that hung with hundred-year-old crystals and look for the umpteenth time at Renoir’s painting “The Luncheon of the Boating Party.” It screamed with life.
“Don’t stop creating if you want to survive,” I told myself.
By spring the restoration was complete and the doors reopened. Some days I would go in just to watch how our 21st century
village pulled from the 19th century cafes. Writers were writing; musicians made music; strong opinions got bantered around. 

Sure, many people came just to get the
yummy lunch specials or the bakery treats, but just as many to feel connected to the village; to step out of the demands of life into moments of leisure. Farmers and teachers, mothers with babies, business folks with laptops; all of us learning the lost art of
lingering.
It’s the Morning Star Coffee and Bistro now, named in part for the last star you see in the eastern sky just after dawn. When the first pots of coffee are brewing and the sweet potato cinnamon rolls go in the oven,
the light of morning star is still rising.
Numerous local artists now have their paintings of the café hanging on the walls, right beside the Impressionists. It feels like we have transcended the centuries, right smack in the middle of our little village. Kelly Koch runs the Morning Star now, a man who combines so much joy for great food with great fun, it’s as though Paul has still shown up for work.
By the end of his life, Renoir was forced to paint by strapping a brush to his arm because of the rheumatoid arthritis that left him debilitated. Still, if you look closely, you see that his paintings are filled with optimism.
“The pain passes,” I read once that Renoir was quoted as saying, “but the beauty always remains.”
Sometimes I almost expect to look over at the corner table and see Renoir and Monet sitting there. Paul might be sitting with them. They might nod their heads
and wink at me. They knew long before I did that it would take the whole village
to keep this café life alive.  Surely they would be smiling.  And now I would smile back. n