Coffee

When I was 13, I started working in a drug store on the corner - yes, Corner Drug.

I was the fountain attendant. Soda jerk to some. I opened three or four mornings week. On those mornings, I made six to eight pots of coffee in glass Corey Vacuum pots with stainless steel containers at the top that receive the boiling water and the funneled it back through a cloth filter into the glass pot at the bottom. I would then remove the stainless funnel top and pour eight cups already set out in front of the eight regulars and on many mornings four standers. By the time that that pot was emptied the second was ready. Then I started two more pots on the electric burners. I had four burner tops but with good technique I rarely had to use the other two except as warmers. I was a coffee making mofo. I started regular coffee drinking then at thirteen. I was good for two cups, maybe three before the first bell at school. I was one wired Jr. High student. I could conjugate Latin verbs and do pre algebra like a wild man. By noon I was finished. Lunch was either on campus or off. I would go shoot a game of pool, have a large coke and a burger and get a second wind. By three thirty, I was back at the Corner Drug making coffee, ice cream sodas, cokes from scratch and dipping ice-cream like a Wildman. Some time there were two of us on duty or I would call the porter in to give me a hand. It was a go go go job. It became my style. I had to multifunction before there was the term. I worked there five years. I made a lot of coffee. When I went into the Army, there was GI coffee. It was never great but it was coffee. The only time that it was great was when they brought it out to the rifle range. It rained every day and night that I was on the range in basic. The grind of shooting in the rain and staying many nights for night fire was grueling. When the coffee came out it was like having a new life. We could drink gallons and just as soon as we got back to the barracks we could fall into a dreamless sleep. Some nights we rode back in Deuces and some nights we ran with M-14s at second position port arms. It was five miles back. At the end of basic, I was one tough 140 pound bag of bones. Coffee got me through. It was the same for AIT. Escape and evasion week was not so pleasant or coffee driven. Tech school was back to mess hall coffee for meals and vending machines in the training building. There was endless coffee available in the field station messes and in the Ops buildings and remote sites. Today. It's two cups in the morning. One or two more if I am riding shotgun with my business partner in the equipment truck during the day. Other wise, I am a morning only coffee person now. The best coffee I have ever had in a restaurant is at any Emeril's. Second to that is any White Castle. Third, on the street in downtown Miami. Cuban, black and syrupy with raw sugar or con leche. (I am sure this last sentence is a fragment, but I am past fixing it.)

European and Middle Eastern coffee? Horse urine. Except for the Italians and the Morocans.

I prefer Chocked Fullo’Nuts Columbian in a Melita cone filter drip system. I occasionally get a bit of Blue Mountain or some Kenyan whole bean. Coffees with flavorings added? My aching culo. No thanks.

Are you aware that coffee roasters are no longer allowed to just vent that delightful smell out of their buildings. There are EPA standards that prohibit that. The steam and roast by product must be scrubbed. That was a Republican Grinch bow to EPA.

Lantern "Bring it On, Juan Valdez" Bearer