this is known as the "beans from merrillville" story. enjoy.
kim and i watch a lot of white sox games (though, not recently, as the white sox seem to be focusing on something other than baseball - possibly spitting, or maybe juggling).
a frequent advertiser during these games was a car dealership, that would advertise "lexus of orland and merrillville". i will mention at this point that everyone i know refers to merrillville as MERR-I-VILLE. the "ll"s go stubbornly unpronounced.
this car dealership has two distinctive qualities in this jingle:
1) the jingle was clearly written for "lexus of orland". the melody cadences down, and only recently had they dubbed in "and merrillville". it clearly seemed like a post-script, and yet
2) they pronounced it MERR-ILL-VILLE, and relatively slowly. i understand that this is the way it is spelled, but i have never heard it pronounced that way other than that commercial.
this commercial indicated to me that this dealership had recently opened a new branch, but hadn't actually visited the town it was located in.
so here i've laid the groundwork; this brings me to the dream.
i normally never remember my dreams, or if i do, i remember oddities (like, why did my 4th grade teacher play tennis with a rubic's cube, why was i fleeing zombies, and when did i become a fire-man known only as "charlie"?)
every once in awhile i remember my dream with precision. this is one of those dreams, where every detail is razor-sharp, and etched in my mind.
i saw a sign posted in the window of a shop in central IL. the sign said "affordable lease-please call". at the urging of LRG44 (kim's dad), i called. the lease was affordable (hence the sign), and so i went to the bank and signed the appropriate papers to be able to open a coffee-shop. LRG44, helen, kim, and i immediately started working to set up shop; from my recollection, this process only took a few hours. (because really, a few hours is all it takes to establish a coffee-shop in an abandoned storefront!)
i set up all of my coffee-makers, and kim and helen made menus and hung them in the shop. i had a fair amount of business on the first day - people coming in and buying cups of drip, french press, vac pot, chemex, etc.
at the end of the day, we closed up shop. at no point did i know what the shop was called - though kim and helen were responsible for putting up the sign above the door.
as i locked the door for the evening, snow had started to fall. there was maybe an inch on the ground already. i looked down the street, and was immensely satisfied. all i had done all day was brew coffee and talk to people, but i remember feeling better than ever before. i stepped into the street, and looked at the coffee-shop one last time. and as i did, i saw in large letters the name of my shop above the door.
the sign read "BEANS FROM MERRILLVILLE".