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PatchWork by Joyce Whitis |
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PatchWork by Joyce Whitis |
The phone rang once just as I gathered in my first sip of morning coffee. I knew before picking it up, just who it would be. "Come on over to the dairy and visit," a familiar voice said. "And by the way, bring some coffee and breakfast sandwiches."
I mumbled something like..."oh sure"....before sinking back into my favorite old rocker. Family members know...but very seldom pay any attention to, my absolute need to have that first cup of morning coffee without conversation, without television, without radio, without communication of any kind except maybe fingers running through the fine hair along the back of a favorite dog. After a few minutes of reflection and the soothing warmth of that first cup, I can generally tackle anything....like fixing breakfast sandwiches and running them over to the dairy.
Earliest memories of pleasant mornings center around a gray granite coffee pot heating on the kitchen stove, a cooking device powered with kerosene. Dad usually made the coffee, as I remember, by filling the pot with water and throwing in a few tablespoons of ground coffee. Mama's biscuits would be rising in the oven, I could check their progress by staring through the little rectangular piece of isinglass in the door. Soon Dad's coffee would start to boil, steam rising from the pot's spout. Mama would turn the ham with a table fork as it started to take on a golden brown color and curl at the edges. Frying in an iron skillet on the next burner were the eggs. I'd gathered them the night before, freshly laid just yesterday. In a few minutes we'd sit down at the oilcloth covered kitchen table to fried eggs, ham with red-eye gravy, hot biscuits, soft butter, peach preserves and boiling hot coffee with a pitcher of cream. Everything on that table was home grown or home made except for the coffee.
It was a good time to be alive.
Later, when I went off to college, coffee became a common way to relax and get acquainted in the student center. When I pulled up a chair to sit with friends, we often choose to match nickels until the odd man out paid for the coffee. Once Rex Marshal put sugar in my cup and I had to throw that drink away. All I ever wanted was some cream, just a tad, I'd say, but please, no sugar. Once cradling a thick restaurant size cup of coffee in hand, the conversation began. Ahh yes, the tales we used to tell as friendships solidified over a cup long gone cold. I don't remember even one of those conversations which must have seemed, at the time, to be near the center of the universe, but the memory of it having happened is warm on a cold winter day.
My coffee has always needed a little cream, just a tad, but the real thing. Milk is OK but half and half is better. In our house, I add the cream or milk first, then pour in the coffee so there is no need to stir, but I can do it backwards if the situation demands it. There is one ingredient that I definitely DON'T want in any coffee that I drink and that is some kind of white powder that some folks pass off as "cream".
Have you ever read the list of stuff that's inside one of those packets? There are some things in there that most folks would never want to put inside their bodies, and then there is the awful taste which approaches that of decayed cow bones.
In recent years the popular trend is toward "flavored" coffee a past time drink enjoyed by many, mostly younger, a more "hip" bunch than members of my generation. If Irish Creme tickles your taste buds, why that's just great but as for me....blah! Just plain coffee please, with a tad of half and half, thanks