Scott Carrino and I are good friends, for the past two years I’ve watched Scott and his wife Lisa in the wild roller-coaster ride that is the life of any small business owner, especially in the restaurant business and especially in a small town like Cambridge, N.Y.

Scott and Lisa are all about community, they have been working their whole adult lives on community – that is why they also built and run Pompanuck Farm. In my wonderful friendship with Scott, I have seen the daunting trials of the small business owner – staffing issues, pricing questions, smothering and expensive government red tape and regulation, the challenges of weather, tastes, snotty and sometimes wildly unfair online reviews.

I do not know Scott and Lisa’s financial details or care to know, but in recent weeks and months I have had the sense that the Round House, which sells delicious, carefully prepared and very healthy food, is turning a corner. The cafe has become a place of community and connection – they host musical evenings, talent night, art shows. There are always people there. The food is a big hit. The coffee is great, the staff is warm and welcoming.

They have, in so many ways, become the soul of the town, a gathering place, a meeting place.

Everywhere, rural communities – beset by chains and box stories and franchise mush-food corporations, economists, feckless politicians and regulators, mega-pharmaceuticals, Wal-Marts – have lost their sense of community, their diners and restaurants, their pharmacists and undertakers, their lawyers and employers.

We used to a place where people pursued their callings, we now see our families and children flee for “jobs” moving to places they don’t like for jobs they hate, working for people who care nothing for them and will throw them in the trash in a heartbeat. For Scott and Lisa, the Round House has been a calling, they work seven long and hard days a week, wading through unimaginable surprises, crises, equipment breakdowns, employee dramas, money challenges,  food issues,  and the many headaches that come from dealing with a grumpy and demanding public.

They have sailed through all of this with grace glory, and yesterday, Maria and I turned our seat over to an older friend and were happy to see the cafe was full, as it increasingly is these days. The Round House is a celebration of community, and of the drive and spirit of two good people  and their staff who work unbelievably hard, and with unflagging dedication. it is good to know that the good guys sometimes win, that hard work does pay, and that community lives and thrives, despite the many challenges that threaten it in the Corporate Nation.

I was never happier to give up a seat.