David Sneed arrives at Howell’s Western Cafe around 4 a.m. every day to make coffee for the group of men who come in during the mornings.
This group includes about six to eight members who gather at Howell’s for the coffee and conversation. Sneed said most of the gang grew up together around Springtown and Azle, and the morning coffee meetings started a lifetime ago. One cafe customer chimed in that the group has always existed, just with a mix of different people.
“The time will change, but the people and the coffee is the same,” Sneed said. “It’s a place for us to gather and enjoy one another, poke fun at one another.”
Not all but most of the men in the group are military veterans, with Sneed serving in the Navy in the 1960s on the West Coast.
“I went before I was invited,” he said. “I joined the Navy to keep from having to be a foot soldier or a Marine because they got shot at all the time.”
After hearing this admission, one of the men at Sneed’s table playfully said Sneed was scared, and Sneed boldly claimed the “scaredy-cat” title.
“If they’re them throwing bullets at me, I ain’t going to stay there long,” he said.
When asked what the guys in the group talk about, Sneed said “girls” – referring to the waitresses – and laughed. Another man at his table corrected the record and said they talk about a whole bunch of topics.
This time in earnest, Sneed answered that the men in the coffee group talk about what’s going on in town and the changes they’ve seen from Springtown’s growth.
The group has persisted over the years because of the friendship among the men who have bonded over shared experience, Sneed said.
“We’re all veterans, and we’ve all been somewhere half of them haven’t been or won’t be or whatever it might be, and we’ve all got something in common to talk about,” he said.
In conversation, the veterans leave out the bad stories about war, Sneed said, and focus on the “general stuff that everyone needs to know.”
“We don’t bring up the nasty part because no one wants to know about (it), unless there’s something wrong with them,” Sneed said. “Stuff that happens in war is not pretty.”
Sneed has honored those in the military who have died overseas before, but for Veterans Day, he said they don’t have plans to do anything special, other than putting up decorations in the cafe.
“We’ll all just show up, (say) glad to see you made it home, all that stuff,” Sneed said. “Because there were a whole lot of them in these wartimes that don’t make it home.”
Sneed’s favorite aspect of the group is the honesty between the men. For an example of their honesty, he said $100 or a single wrench could be sitting on the table all day, and the men won’t take what’s not theirs.
Sneed is confident that the coffee group will continue with the younger generations, just like his posse is following the men who came before them.
“They’ll be another batch of boys come in behind us,” he said. “There always are. Somebody will step in.”
