One, two, three days to drive their red-and-white Volkswagen bus from California to Alabama.
Grant and Kathryn Heath had been residing in the Bay Area, where Grant worked for a friend’s natural-food business. It was the early ‘70s, an ideal time for groovy young adults like the Heaths to be in the Bay Area. They saw famous local rock bands like the Grateful Dead play concerts there many times.
Grant also loved the coffee over in the San Francisco’s Italian-rooted North Beach neighborhood. Places like Caffe Malvina roasted their own coffee, mostly for their espresso. “I’d never tasted anything like that in my life,” he says. “You know, it was so full and rich. And I got the fever in pretty short order that I wanted to do that.”
After first, the Heaths thought about starting their own café in the Bay Area. But, as Grant puts it, “You’d have about four months to make it or break it because [the cost of living] was so expensive.”
As Heath’s young daughter neared school age, the married couple said they didn’t feel great about her going to Bay Area public schools. They couldn’t afford private tuition either. Eventually they decided, “Let’s go back home” to North Alabama, recalls Grant. When they’d moved West, he was 25. This was five years later.
