COFFEE GROUP QUESTIONS - Can you spare a minute?

I'm working on a paper about the folklore of coffee groups (y'know, the ones where old (usually retired) gals and guys gather to sip coffee and shoot the breeze...) for an American Folklore class I'm taking and I need your help! Kindly, answer the following questions for me about your coffee group:

1. 
   
   How long has your coffee group existed, where did it start, how many members belonged to it then and of what gender, and please tell me the number of members, gender mix, and (not required) location of your coffee group today. Do your family members sometimes visit the group?


2. 
   
   Tell me about the folklore of your group, i.e., games you play (often to determine who pays for the coffee or the tip), lingo/jokes/stories/pranks (often told and easily recognizable) of your group. Some groups collect money to donate to good causes. If your group does this, tell me about it.


3. 
   
   Is there folklore surrounding where your group meets or people in your group, i.e., one group I know meets at a "haunted" hotel, while there are ghost stories involving the general store where yet another group meets.


4. 
   
   What is the significance of the group for you (what does it mean to you to have it available to you?). Do members check on each other when people don't show up? Do they help each other outside of the group?


5. 
   
   Can you direct me to any published articles about your group, or do you have photos to share (that I could use in my paper)?

My father-in-law belongs to a coffee group in Alma, Michigan, and I have a great photo of the guys (hands upraised) playing the quarter game, but I can't post it here w/o their permission. My FIL's group has been meeting for quite awhile - enough so that the original members are long gone and their current group is dwindling in number, making it fearful that the group will die out altogether. Do you share this fear about your group? Do you have methods you use to increase membership? The ROMEOS (http://www.romeoclub.org/chapters.htm) have little to fear, because they've made a website for their groups so others know meeting locations and times - making it so fresh blood will never be a problem. Another well-known coffee/breakfast (and other activities) group with chapters is the Red Hat Society. Yet another large group can be found here: http://sir1.org/index.html.

Read below to see how my FIL and his cronies play the number game and the quarter game:

"This group gathering with accompanying game play is a long-standing tradition in Alma, Michigan, having out-lived many members of the group over the course of forty to sixty years and progression through three different restaurants in town (being bumped to another restaurant after each one closed). Over time, the number of members has grown from three or four to as many as twenty. My father-in-law says the original group played only one game – the number game. Someone picks a number and writes it down (usually on a napkin). Everyone already understands that the number falls somewhere between one and 100. Another player guesses the number and the original person says whether the guess is high or low. For instance, the secret number might be 23 and the next member guesses it is 17. The original person announces that 17 is too low, so another member guesses a number and so on until someone is stuck with guessing the exact number and has to pay for everyone’s coffee. Now coffee has become so expensive that the members of the group must play the number game three times to determine three members who will be stuck paying for the coffee.
Then each member puts a dollar into a pile and tries to determine who gets the pile of dollars. Before they start that process, though, they flip coins to see who is going to put in a dollar on behalf of somebody else in the group. After that, they flip coins again to determine who is going to be the beneficiary of that dollar (so he won’t have to put his own dollar into the game). After that, it’s a simple coin flip (someone cries out “heads” or “tails” and the others in the group must have whatever that person ends up with on his coin toss to stay in the game) to decide who gets whatever is on the table. Usually, the winner subtracts and leaves a tip for the waitress(es) from his winnings, pocketing the remainder. Some members create a partnership, i.e., if one wins the pot then he must split it three ways with the other members of his partnership. "

More online articles about coffee groups:

Arcola, Illinois: An Amazing Little Town with a Heart! “Arcola Celebrates Sesquicentennial in 2005” (Reprint) Arcola Record-Herald 7 July 2005) http://arcola.govoffice2.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BBFC9FF33-23F4-4F61-B591-D806F5EC56C5%7D


Allen, Lee. “The Coffee Crew” Tucson Weekly http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid?3A65268


Barker, Barbara. “Packers Coffee Klatch Been Huddling Since ‘47” Newsday http://www.newsday.com/sports/football/ny-spbarb205545378jan20,0,1111856.story


Baxter, Annie. “Co-ops Help Keep Rural Towns Alive” Minnesota Public Radio 4 August 2004 http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/08/06_baxtera_indycafe/


Bruner, Betsey. “Like a Fading Star, Flagstaff Astronomer Giclas Dies at 96” The Arizona Daily Sun http://news.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=148886&syr=2007


“Café Owners Say They are ‘Worn Out’” The Bismarck Tribune 13 August 2007 http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/08/13/news/state/137695.prt


Dennis, Brady. “End of an Era at Barb’s” St. Petersburg Times 30 March 2001 http://www.sptimes.com/News/033001/Pasco/End_of_an_era_at_Barb.shtml


Clever, Dick. “Coffee Talk and County History are Fixtures at the Big Rock Grocery” Skagit Valley Herald 17 February 2008 www.goskagit.com/search


Frommer’s “Rooney’s Northern Lights” Review http://www.frommers.com/destinations/print-dining.cfm?r_id=48986&destID=1731&p_id=


Gallob, Joel “Coffee and Class” Ravalli Republic 1 February 2008 http://www.ravallirepublic.com/articles/2008/02/01/news/news01.prt

Garrow, Hattie Brown. “50 Years and – Still Talking At With [sic] the Oceana Coffee Club” The Virginia-Pilot http://hamptonroads.com/node/310001


Goldblatt, Jennifer. “The Coffee Club.” St. Petersburg Times 18 February 2001 http://www.sptimes.com/News/021801/Pasco/The_coffee_club.shtml


Henning, Sarah. “The Daily Grind” Lawrence Journal-World & 6News 9 March 2008 http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/mar/09/daily_grind/


Isern, Tom. “Plains Folk: Web (Sites) of Activity” NEWS for North Dakota 09 September 1999 http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/newsrelease/1999/090999/13plains.htm


Juillerat, Lee and Baksys, Gerry. “Coffee, Lies and Gossip” Herald and News 30 July 2006 http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2006/07/30/news/local_news/local1.txt


Lutey, Tom. “Small Town Tries to Keep the Feeling” Spokesman Review 24 September 2006 http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=151251


Pastor Jeff Higbie, Northern Expositor “The Numbers Game is Rigged!” 28 August 2007 http://northernexpositor.blogspot.com/2007/08/numbers-game-is-rigged.html


Robertson, Robbie. “Birthday No. 34 Will Certainly Be One to Forget” The Newton Record 1 February 2006 http://www.thenewtonrecord.com/archivesearch/local_story_032113210.html


Robertson, Robbie. “It’s Not Hard to Find Good People” The Star-Herald 9 May 2007 http://www.starherald.net/columns/local_story_129145100.html


Squires, Chase. “Neukom’s Ready to End an 80-Year Tradition” St. Petersburg Times 8 March 2001 http://www.sptimes.com/News/030801/Pasco/Neukom_s_ready_to_end.shtml


Terry, Don. “Spring Comes Back to Greenbay” The New York Times 3 April 2008 http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=Spring+Comes+Back+to+Greenbay&srchst=nyt


Weiser, Kathy. Legends of America 1 April 2008 http://legendsofamerica/AZ-Weatherford.html


Williamson, Elizabeth. “As Coffee Brews, City’s Old Guard Stirs Up Memories” Washington Post 17 April 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59652-2005Apr16.html

http://www.ypsilantihistoricalsociety.org/publications/winter2006.pdf

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This blogging stuff is still relatively new to me. Maybe I'll post about how much fun I have substitute teaching little kids...or maybe how much fun it is to have my own teenage kids...or maybe just about the joy of being in a loving, supportive marriage after having grown up "walking on eggshells" around my alcoholic, abusive father. Don't know. I guess you'll just have to wait and see. ;-)

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