archaeography

I do not recall why I first stopped in here. Perhaps it was one of the two bold “OPEN” flags, or one of the banners advertising “Sicilian Pizza” or “Start Your Day with French Toast Souffle!” The charming New England-ness of the Black Goose Café in Tiverton, RI includes a nice patio for the warm times and a fantastic view of an inlet, rife with seabirds and watercraft at all times of year.

The small interior smells of coffee and pastries, and creates a Rhode Islander atmosphere through local names of dishes, a community bulletin board, and small, overpriced paintings by a local artist. The restroom, marked as “La Toilette” with a hand painted sign, drew my attention, and not for its intended function. From my seat in the café I saw a picture taken in the mid-20th century and investigated further.

“Reid’s Gulf Built 1949 by Edson “Jiggsy” Reid,” reads the caption. It harkens back to a postwar boom when automobiles were large and heavy, and gas stations knew their customers. A light dusting of snow suggests the photo was taken at the end of a long winter when skies returned to blue and days were longer.

While viewing Reid’s Gulf, I suddenly noticed another glossy portrait to the right, behind the door. The caption tells us nothing more than a time, “2006.” Gray skies, a film of dilapidation, and a lone SUV create a far less hopeful scene than the previous picture. It is not until closer viewing that I recognized that “2006” was a photo of a new iteration of Reid’s Gulf, without the filling station. The garage door, slightly agape, matches the original 1949 version.

I sat back down and gazed over the sunny water. I suddenly realized the significance of the photos in the lavatory. I saw the same curbline, the telephone pole, the gravel lot in both photos directly in front of me. The Black Goose Café sits atop the old home of Reid’s Gulf, and has immortalized its place memory in two different photographs.

The incorporation of the old, erased place into the new suggests something far less sinister than the brutal conquest of coffee over gasoline as the fuel of choice for southeastern Rhode Island. To me, it crystallizes a quirky phenomenon in the state: namely, giving directions by using the phrase where something “used to be.” Through its appreciation of times gone past, Black Goose Café asserts its pride in being in a place where something used to be.