Café Society

At any moment I expect the camera dollies to come around the corner and someone to yell, Action!…surely I’ve slipped into a movie. I’m sitting in a café on the Douro River watching walkers arm-in-arm dodging the cyclists as they stream down the bikeway toward Matosinhos, 20 strong.  The Plane trees are shading the whole avenue. The sea breeze is fragrant, welcomed. Fishermen are tinkering with their boats and nets down on the hard. Up in the street the young Turks roar by on their Ducatis not daring to smile, but making stunning noises. Once in a while the wooden number 18 CARMO trolly clatters to a stop a couple of feet from my table and a few people get on or off.

On the deck of the café next to the one where I sit a man is playing the accordion very well. A walking group of seven “book club” looking women just strode by with great purpose, all of them talking at once…sounded like about 50 people. A girl of four looked up from her coloring book and waved at me; I waved back and a moment later she gave me one of her paintings.

When she left with her dad, she looked over the deck railing and called out, “Tchau Tchau Tchau!” I was thrilled. There was a man sitting at the rail table with his coffee and a friend chanced by, stood two feet from him and they both shouted at each other joyfully in the way of the Portuguese, waving their arms, having a swell time.

People are walking their dogs, having coffee with their dogs, showing strangers pictures of their dogs. The French Bulldogs come swaggering by looking to find a beef with somebody, anybody, and the Jack Russells pause at a few select table legs to piss importantly, leaving their numbers. A smiling young woman parked her German Shepherd at my table, draped the leash over my arm and said, “You would like to be with him for a moment, yes?…He likes you,” and she walked inside the cafe. He curled up on my feet.

In the cab going back to the garage where a trailer hitch is being installed, the taxi driver noticed a guy walking by the taxi with earphones on, bobbing his head in full groove; I mean Jukin! “Star Rock!” said the taxi driver. These are my finest moments in Porto.

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