The Smithy Cafe
A quick holiday portrait.
I’m content as an old dog right now, a low winter sun warming my back, tucked into a nook of this cafe in New Preston, which is itself a nook in Northeast Connecticut–in the hills–a tiny hamlet with a few tight roads weaving between old homes and buildings and repurposed mills. These are the classic New England buildings you’re probably thinking of, with deeply grooved floors that are no longer square and may never have been, tall paned windows that have generations of paint along the trim–windows which happen to have wreaths hanging this late week of December. The few shops here are tailored for affluent New Yorkers visiting their second homes, which is to say, for window shopping if you’re a sleepy old dog from the Northeast.
Families come and go on the long bench that runs the length of the back wall, which is really just three large windows peering over the East Aspetuck river and, from where I’m leaning looking North, New Preston falls. The kids who are now grown, taking cracks at dad for his taste in holiday music. This is a portrait I’m painting.
The family comes together for the holidays. Maybe as a Norman Rockwell piece. He would capture this well, with the leaning and laughing, the coffee cups suspended between the table and the mouth. Exaggerated expressions, like eyebrows raised before a smile. Festive colors, probably the red of the ribbons. Steam from the cups. The low sun warmly spilling through the panes, unique to this time of year and for cafes that sit on hillsides facing East. The lines that taper out into a white vignette.
“Should we drive around the lake now?” And so they leave in layers of sweaters and corduroy and fur into a keen long-shadowed day. The tables soak up some gold for a moment until another family sits along the same bench. And so it goes.