Forrest Malone, Dave Behnke and Joe Feira have pushed two tables together at Neighborhood Café, where they chuckle between sips of decaffeinated coffee. Their spot is next to the windows, peering out onto downtown Lee's Summit, Missouri.
“We come here every day,” Malone says. “Dave and I come seven days a week and sit here and drink coffee. Same table, same people. We've seen a lot of waitresses come and go.”
Malone explains that about 14 years ago, when he first started coming to this restaurant, there was a group of men already sitting at the tables they now occupy.
“Pretty soon they started dwindling apart,” Malone says. ”They invited us to sit back here and then pretty soon, next thing you know, we're the next ones in line.”
Behnke, meanwhile, has been coming to the Neighborhood Café since 2002.
"We settle the world's problems up here, then we leave about 9 o'clock, and everything goes back the way it was," Behnke jokes.