Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
Fort Smith (May 28/01) - The coffee shop crowd in Fort Smith is still buzzing about a minor miracle or at least a pretty amazing feat of physics.
About 7:00 a.m. on May 15, Pinecrest Cafe manager Bill Fung was putting on the morning coffee. Soon after the first pot perked, Fung opened the front door for regular Chris Vogt.
"He's always first through the door," Fung said. "He was sitting right where he always does -- at the table for regulars."
Fung poured a cup for Vogt and returned the pot to the element. He topped-up the pot with a new batch and heard a small sizzle when he returned it to the element. He picked up the carafe to see if he'd over-filled it.
Vogt noticed a gaping hole in the side of the pot.
"He turned around to face me and I saw a two-and-a-half inch hole in the pot," said Vogt. "I said, 'Bill, you have a hole in your pot.'"
When he noticed the hole in the pot, Fung ran to the sink and quickly dumped the coffee in the sink.
"As soon as I dumped it into the sink, we looked at each other and wondered why it didn't leak," Fung said. "It was a full pot and it didn't leak."
The pair said there wasn't a drop of coffee on the floor or anywhere else. Nor could they find a piece of glass from the hole.
"There should have been coffee everywhere," Vogt said. "But there was nothing on the floor."
Having owned and managed many restaurants, Fung has never seen anything like this.
"Breaking a coffee pot is not an unusual thing -- I've seen so many broken, but I've never seen one broken without a sharp edge," he said, running his hand through the tear-drop opening. "There is no sharp edge or a crack."
"I'm a university educated man," he said. "I know two things: this is a broken pot and if it's full of coffee, the coffee should come out; so obviously the first case doesn't stand."
"This may be a weak spot in the pot, but if that is the case where is the piece that popped out," he asked. "If it popped out, the coffee should have come out too."
Vogt too was uncertain why the pot held the coffee, but thinks it may have something to do with "surface tension and atmospheric pressure."
Fung thinks the event is going to give him luck to win the lottery, but some residents think it was divine intervention.
"Angie (Paulette) and Vina (Champagne) think it's an angel that made it happen," Fung said. Science or faith, the witnesses are sure only that it happened.
"That's the story -- believe it or not," Fung laughs.:
