By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

JEFFERSON, Iowa, Sept. 15, 2024 – The other day, I ran into Ben Ullem, who’s been an attorney, law school dean, and farmland owner in southern Iowa.  He’s a good fellow I’ve gotten to know in recent years but don’t see often enough.

“So what are you doing now to keep yourself busy?” Ullem asked, approximately.

The question kind of stopped me.  Hmm, let’s see, I thought. I’m mostly retired, I still write a little, my wife Mary Riche and I enjoy traveling – ball games, concerts, live theater.  But what do I really accomplish, day in and day out?

“I go to coffee,” I heard myself answer.

Ullem laughed, and then started telling me about a coffee group he drops in on occasionally.  He thinks it has lasted 40 years and was headed by Des Moines car dealer Chuck Betts until his passing earlier this month.

Which brings up this: I want to know about Iowa’s best, most unusual and longest-meeting coffee groups, male and female.  Tell me about yours at chuck@offenburger.com.  In this new coffee drinking season that is starting, tell me if your group is willing to have visitors; I might bring some.

Our Jefferson group, the “Bean Boyz,” being interviewed by Dan Zak of the Washington Post (back to camera) just before the Iowa Presidential Caucuses in early 2020.

Now, let me tell you about the two groups where I show up most often.

In one in Des Moines, I’m a relative newbie, having been attending only the last two years.  The group meets on Wednesday afternoons from 1:30 p.m. until 3 p.m. or later, at Palmer’s Deli & Market in West Des Moines.  It includes a dozen or so sports figures, most of them at least semi-retired from careers as sportswriters, broadcasters, game officials, a coach or two, a college prof, and a couple of rabid fans.  Ten or more are men, and there are two women.  Our leader is Mike Mahon, who has had a long career in sports production, marketing and promotion. The group doesn’t have an official name, as far as I know, but I call them the “Old Sports.”

My main group does have a name, the “Bean Boyz,” and we meet weekday mornings 9:30 to 11 a.m. in Jefferson.  Our headquarters is Greene Bean Coffee, the delightful coffeehouse and kind of funky community center that has served Jefferson and Greene County for the past decade or so.

After we’d been gathering there a couple years, the two baristas then, Keygan Barber and Lyndsey Wathen, said one day if we were going to be meeting almost daily, we probably needed a name, and one of them blurted out “Bean Boyz.”  Then Barber added, “And spell that with a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’ – it’ll make you old farts seem hipper.”

Our headquarters in Jefferson.

It’s true that we’re older.  The 19 of us whom we regard as “regulars” range in age from 89 down to 52.  But I think we lean younger in our thinking and our interests, kind of what you’d expect from a group of 1960s guys who’ve become senior citizens.

Our leaders are Guy Richardson, a retired county supervisor and property abstracter, and Doug McDermott, a retired bank president.  They trace our beginnings to about 2012, when they say we evolved from an informal breakfast group that had been meeting at the Uptown Café in Jefferson.

A couple years later, we began meeting at the coffeehouse.  During the COVID shutdowns, when the weather was warm, we met in scattered lawn chairs at the shelter house in Jefferson’s Russell Park.  When cold weather came, then-City Administrator Mike Palmer kindly gave us the keys to the clubhouse at the municipally owned Jefferson Community Golf Course and made us promise to sit six feet apart.

The last two years, we’ve shifted our warm-weather meetings to the front porch or back deck of the home of Guy and Katie Richardson.  And Katie’s daughter Lisa Salacz, of Hopewell, N.J., surprised us last year by giving us handsome Yeti, professionally-lettered “Bean Boyz” coffee mugs.

The coffeehouse continues as our headquarters.

Some of the “Bean Boyz” and our wives at the recent wedding reception for Trevor and Rachel Wishman. Front row, left to right, Carole and Roger Custer, Doug and Jan McDermott, Betty Magee. Back row, left to right, Mary Riche and Chuck Offenburger, Katie and Guy Richardson, Trevor and Rachel Wishman, Jed Magee. (Photo by Leslie Cook Photography)

Our group has been through a lot together.  There have been two weddings, mine to Mary Riche, and our Trevor Wishman recently marrying his Wild Rose Casino co-worker Rachel Thomas Wishman.  We’ve had three deaths – Iowa District Court Judge Bill Ostlund, sanitation service owner Neil Wright, and state legislator-farmer Carroll Perkins.  We’ve had other deaths in our families.  There have been golf trips, birthday celebrations, wedding anniversaries, potluck dinners, Christmas parties and more.

What do we talk about when we gather?

The news, sports, local business and development, politics and personalities.

Rick Morain, semi-retired editor & publisher of the Jefferson Newspapers and still a columnist, captured what we do this way: “We conduct analysis,” Morain said the other day, “and we undergo it, too.”

Rick Morain. (Photo by Mary Riche)

Retired Iowa District Court Judge Jed Magee is also a noted poet and did some analysis of the Bean Boyz in a poem in February, 2022:

The codgers meet daily in the morning
at the local “Greene Bean” coffee shop.

A “diverse” and eclectic group, mostly retired –
electrician, banker, lawyer, businessmen,
school administrator, part-time scribbling journalists
and a farmer (in between planting and harvesting times).

Momentous and mundane topics hold sway most days —
golf and baseball and football
the price of corn and of the land it comes from
chickens and muskrats
local history and local characters (past and present)
politics (local – generally approved;
national – disappointing, dreary and disgusting).

At times esoteric subjects require research by Smart phones —
scores and coaches and rosters – as well as roosters;
the amount of poop a pigeon excretes in a year or
how fast butterflies and hummingbirds fly.

Ah, if only such experience and wisdom could be bottled
and the elixir made available to the world at large.

We’ve had some political candidates stop by, usually those seeking local offices.  We also had Dan Zak, who was doing political reporting for the Washington Post before the 2020 Iowa Presidential Caucuses, sit in with us for a full, 90-minute session.

Occasionally the Bean Boyz have a really nice tradition for closing our meetings.

Duane “Herb” Dozier, retired director of the radiology department at the Greene County Medical Center, found a wonderful saying on a coffee cup years ago. He bought the cup, memorized the verse, and will recite it when we coax him:

A cup of coffee,
shared with friends,
is happiness tasted,
and time well-spent.

It’s a warm reminder that the coffee gatherings that so many of us enjoy are indeed worth the time we devote to them.

Some of the “Bean Boyz” with our Yeti coffee mugs. Front, left to right, Jerry Fields, Roger Custer, Guy Richardson, Dave Clopton. Back, left to right, Trevor Wishman, Sid Jones, John Rowland, Chris Durlam, Doug McDermott.

The columnist with his “Bean Boyz” mug. (Photo by Mary Riche)

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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.