FAIRHOPE, Ala.—If you're expecting the kind of advice that know-it-all Lucy doled out from behind her booth in Peanuts cartoons, you've come to the wrong place.

Lucy's advice, though often hilarious to us, rarely left clients Linus, Schroeder and Charlie Brown feeling better or wiser. To put it mildly.

But at Sonya and Nancye's “Friendly Advice” booth at Latte Da coffee shop at Page and Palette bookstore in Fairhope, you're in for a different experience.

“Sonya (Bennett)and Nancye (Jennings) are two really dynamic people,” says Karin Wilson, owner of the bookstore and coffee shop. “But when you get them together, something magical happens.”

Some of that magic happened while the trio were batting around ideas of how to help the bookstore. Lyn Buchanan, a newcomer to Fairhope, walked up and asked what they were going.

“Solving the problems of the world,” said Bennett, laughing at the thought.

But after a few seconds, thinking about it some more, Jennings and Bennett said, almost at the same time, the story goes, that maybe they should have a booth and give out advice.

A couple days later they got an email from Wilson, with a sketch of the advice booth she was building for them. The booth appeared in the corner of the coffee shop not long after.

“I was a little nervous at first,” Jennings said to a reporter, who had just plopped down a nickel of his own. “But now it's a lot of fun.”

In the course of less than an hour Sunday morning, a small line formed of curious coffee-shop patrons, nickel in hand.

“It was really for the experience of it and to be part of the fun,” said David Smithson, of Fairhope. “I sort of respected their maturity and wondered what they would have to say.”

He said he had just come back from the 99^th birthday of his aunt and the booth made him think fondly of the “good advice” he had received from her over the years.

Wilson told The Courier that the dynamic duo can offer their friendly advice services as long as the spirit moves them.

“Of course, they’re the two that came to me towards the beginning of this year and asked, 'How can we help P&P?'” Wilson said. “I really didn’t know what to tell them. But after several meetings, the two of them put together the Page & Palette Bookmark (friend of the bookstore program).

“Everything they do is all in good fun,” she said. “At only 5 cents a visit, they can afford to offer a money-back guarantee. Customers have also been generous, donating a dollar to the jar for the ‘scholarship fund.’ So even if you can’t afford the advice, someone has already paid it forward.”