Wet Dreams

The Starfish Cafe was the thing I liked the best at the end of my time at Union Mission. It's a restaurant we opened when I sold an old lawyers office across the street from what is now Paula Deans restaurant. (In retrospect, it was a stupid thing to do but we made a bundle and bought our own restaurant.) The Starfish Cafe is also a culniary arts training program for homeless people. Hundreds have graduated and now work for, or operate, their own restaurants across the country. Orginially it was named The Bread & Butter Cafe (thank you Leigh Calhoun Martin for the name) and right off the bat it became crazily successful. Nobody had ever done a restaurant/culinary arts training program for homeless people before. There was a lot of press. CNN showed up and ran a story for four consecutive days over a holiday weekend. I was in an airport somewhere when I saw it. Al Roker and the TODAY Show arrived and did a live broadcast. (They actually did two, coming back the next year to gauge our progress.) SOUTHERN LIVING Magazine followed then National Public Radio kept me on the phone doing interviews for the longest time. After that we hit the bump in the road. The Food Bank decided to it wanted to be sole owner though Union Mission owned the place. So I get a phone call one day and am told by an attorney to "cease and deist" using the name Bread & Butter Cafe because the Food Bank had trademarked it. I'm a good guy and didn't want to cause any trouble so I changed the name to "I Can't Believe it's not the Bread & Butter (thank you Micah Berry for coming up with that and Kurt Schmit for hanging the sign). The Press went nuts and we got a whole new round of press and many more customers. My friends at The Savannah College of Art & Design hosted a contest to come come up with a new name. Hundreds of entries tried for the grand prize of free lunch for a week. The Starfish Cafe was the winner because of the story of the little girl trying to save starfish washed ashore by throwing them back into the sea. She's told there are too many dying starfish to save and she can't make a difference. She smiles while throwing another back into the water and answers, "I made a difference to that one." After twenty-three years at Union Mission, I was burned out, my marriage was falling apart and I couldn't manage all of the need anymore. I had too many of my own. Asking the Board for a Sabbatical, they said no, even though there was a clear policy they'd approved saying I should have it). So it all got worse. The marriage fell apart. I continued to burn out (thank you Jerry Rainy, Herb McCkenzie and Philip Solomon). At the end, we were opening up lots of new stuff but the only thing that still stired by soul was The Starfish Cafe. Yesterday, Sarah and I returned to the Cafe. It's always interesting to tip-toe through the past. The Cafe itself looks as good as it when it opened (thank you Chef Paul for caring) though the rest of the place looks neglected. The old press clippings that I'd hung remain on the walls. The garden across the street (bought when I'd won an award and donated all the cash to Union Mission so we could buy three parccels of property) looks the same as it did two years ago when I left. We had our meeting. People came to give Sarah and I hugs. We had lots of emotions. It's ashamed when you can't quite shake all of the past. Then we left ... and went swimming (me in my underwear). D-Luv was hosting. The girls were having a blast. Ryan showed up with Ginger, his dog. It was a typical Tybee moment. We forgot about the Cafe and enjoyed ourselves. Later the phone rang and the past was calling and left a message. "How do you get certified for culinary arts instruction?" Not answering, we left and went to Huck-A-Poos for Sean's birthday party. It's hard when the past calls. It's like a wet dream ... no longer the real thing.