Walnut is a city of approximately 40,000, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The interstate neatly cleaves into two distinct sections, one of which is modern and heavy with strip malls, the other considerably older, with very few developments over the past decade or two. The downtown proper is one mild exception, however, as things have slowly been on the upswing, with the addition of a craft brewery slash restaurant and a trendy coffee shop, to go with charming older institutions such as a timeworn diner and an ancient two screen theater which still shows first run movies.
It’s directly into the middle of all four that the latest Healthy Hippie enterprise will drop. Yet not as a proper, freestanding store, but rather more like an outpost. Directly across the street from the coffee shop, there’s a large indoor market, a plaza where individual businesses rent space, and the HHM squadron is set to occupy a spacious corner stall.
This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-35/
