“In coffee
In pepper and salt
In delicate flavors of spice
In textures and colors
In supporting beams
In the rock of a hearth
Where you prefer to take your meal.”

These recollections from ‘The Face of Joe’ are mostly drawn from lunches with Joe at a little family restaurant in the town of Paradise, California, ‘The Cozy Diner’. Joe loved this restaurant. A few majestic Ponderosa pines grew around the rear parking lot towering over the restaurant and a few other buildings, including a quaint, little apartment complex tucked away in the back. Walking in the main rear doors always gave me a sense of being high in the mountains, when in fact we were on a ridge in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, not more than ten miles or so from the Sacramento Valley floor. These trees spoke to Joe and were his friends.

On November 8, 2018 the Camp Fire raged through this part of Paradise, but the Cozy Diner still stands. I heard on the local news that the restaurant had reopened a couple of weeks ago. I do not know the fate of these trees, but I pray they still watch over this place.

I have not had the heart to visit Paradise since the fire, even though I live not that far away. I tell myself that I want to remember Paradise as it was, as Joe knew it, as I knew it with Joe. But, I am aware that this is not the whole truth.