Cult of the Baristas Revisited
All over Ithaca people are disappearing. Young people, middle aged people, old people. One by one.
So far it's been very gradual, almost imperceptible. A few here, a few there. Not like Latin America, you know, the military junta disappearance blues. That doesn't happen in America the beautiful (to distinguish the US from americas with small 'a's, those less beautiful Americas ruled by dictators and paramilitary gangs.) People aren't herded out of bed in the middle of the night, taken to a football stadium and 'disappeared' , only to have their skeletal remains discovered in a bog decades later.
That's not America the beautiful. Yet. We have 4 more years however.
In America, the 'disappeared' are usually called runaways. That is, when the people who vanish are not small children, abducted by an estranged parent, or sexual predators who haven't yet appeared on America's Most Wanted. (Only in America. Sociopaths and psychopaths have their own tv series.) Teenagers run away from homes that are too restrictive or parents that are too oppressive. Or they run away to catch up to their dreams in big cities. Sometimes they end up in hippie communes run by Charlie Manson wannabees. Occasionally the disappeared find themselves washing dishes, making wraps, and serving coffee to yuppie college students.
Yes, it's happening in Ithaca. Right here in I-town, rhymes with Pie, stands for pie in the sky, it's a lie, can't you see, and see rhymes with 'c" for cult.
Ezra's on the case. Call it the case of the Cult of the Baristas. Right, Holmes?Watson, come here. Ezra needs you.
Ezra has seen the spider like tentacles of the Reverend Billy Bob, what ever his name is, you know, the dude from Arkansas, curling around Ithaca. Ezra has seen how they operate. Those adepts of the Secret Sandwich, the cohorts of the Mate Factor.
They're at work as we write this. Making wraps, brewing batches of their evil tea-like drink, lacing it with drugs that gradually reduce the will power of unsuspecting patrons. They're worse than the tobacco companies for crying out loud. You go in for a lunch special, you know, half a wrap and a cup of soup. First, you're sucked in by the exotic ambience, the palm trees, the sweetly fragrant tropical plants, so mysterious and inviting, especially if you live in a world of perpetual winter like Ithaca. Then, they give you a free cup of Mate Factor. Before you know it, you're making wraps somewhere in Vermont or Ithaca, New York, growing a beard, wearing baggy, distinctively unsexy clothes that you wouldn't even find at the Salvation Army.
Ezra has seen them chatting up their prospective victims on the Commons. Overheard snatches of converation. "Hey, do you want to believe in a God that doesn't forgive you?" Do you want to work for nothing, turn over your checking account to the Reverend Billy Bob, sleep in a tennis complex? Do you want to be a barista of God? Or do carpentry for the shady construction company that goes around the country, building restaurants that serve as fronts for the Rev. Billy Bob's sinister empire?Hey, you get Saturdays off.
Ok, Ithacans, you thought they were here just to run a restaurant?
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:26 AM
