3-30-06 Coffee
In a very large but empty parking lot where a Caldor department store used to be, there yet remains a handful of other stores. One of these, all the way down in the corner, is a Dunkin' Donuts. The way this huge empty lot is situated, at the intersection of two well travelled roads, there are a lot of people who will come streaming into the lot from a couple of different directions. A few of them are merely attempting to avoid the traffic light at the intersection, but most of them are swinging in to get a coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts.
It's a macabre ballet. Since the cars can enter the lot from a couple of different places, and since the strategically placed exits out of the lot can accomodate a couple of choices for avoiding the traffic light, along with the "I wanna be first in line at the drive-thru" paths that can be taken across the lot, watching this activity is really very interesting.
It's a great place to sit in the taxi and wait for my next job to come through on the computer terminal. I like to sit in one particular area of the parking lot because it's right in the middle of all the action. Although there's a lot of interesting byplay all day long, the morning rush hour is the best.
Like bees drawn to honey, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, the clamoring and jockeying for position in the race across the lot to the Dunkin' Donuts is absolutely riveting.
For anyone who might be interested, these webpages invovle themselves in the history of coffee...
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/coffee/history.htm
http://sovrana.com/libstory.htm
...and, of course, there are plenty of others.
What I find interesting about the history of coffee is that it hit Europe around the middle ages, and may be partly responsible for adding fuel to the rennaissance. Prior to that, coffee had found its way to Turkey. Is it a coincidence that the Ottoman Empire's rise and growth occured during this time of coffee dominance? Who knows?
What we do know is that coffee, rather than tea, is the most popular legal stimulant in America. Dollar for dollar, coffee is second only to petroleum as a commodity. And I can see why this is whenever I watch the people in their cars jockeying for first place in the drive-thru at that Dunkin' Donuts.
There are the equivalent of about 12.7 cubic miles of ground coffee used to brew what the world drinks every year (400 billion cups, at two tablespoons per cup). It's the most successful over the counter drug in the world. Everyone keeps coming back for more, every day.
Everything about coffee makes it my number one drug of choice. It tastes great AND it cranks me up!
As with all drugs, however, there's a downside to be considered in all of this. A webpage here...
http://www.holistic-physician.com/articles/broch-coffee.htm
...can easily ruin anyone's enjoyment of coffee. So, if you don't want to quit drinking it, don't read that particular article. When you think you do need to cut down on your coffee drinking, though, that's a good place to get into the mood.
I didn't get into the coffee drinking scene until around the late 1970's. Until that point, I had never actually been exposed to a good cup of coffee. It was after I got divorced from my first wife in 1977-78 when I began hanging around a restaurant that brewed Mocha Java with spring water as their "house coffee". That was the point where coffee began to effect its fascinating magic upon me. Prior to that I did drink coffee at coffee breaks at work... out of a vending machine. It was truly horrible coffee, but it was the custom at that job to slurp this swill during our morning break.
The Mocha Java set the hook for me, and aside from a hiatus or two, this is where I began drinking coffee in earnest. During the 1980's, I spent a few years hanging out at another restaurant that had a "bottomless" cup of coffee. From that point, my coffee drinking settled in as a regular thing. But it was still only when I went to a restaurant.
Although the "Mr. Coffee" home coffee-maker came onto the scene in the 1970's, I didn't latch onto home coffee brewing until the late 1980's. The problem, mainly, was that brewing coffee at home remained a matter of not having decent ground coffee available at the local supermarket. It was when Dunkin' Donuts began selling bags of ground coffee that I ended up on the final leg of my journey into complete coffee saturation.
With various side trips into other blends from time to time, my coffee drinking centered around the Dunkin' Donuts blend for about a decade. Then one Saturday morning about five years ago, my wife and I went out for breakfast at a local diner, and were served the absolutely best tasting coffee either of us had ever had. It was just plain the best. And to make it even better, the coffee was served in those heavy "diner" style off-white mugs that have all those scars all over them from long years of use.
I mean, it was just perfect! So we went back there a few times, and each time that coffee was enough to set both of us off into coffee heaven! I finally asked the waitress what brand of coffee it was, and she came back to say that it was called "Superior" brand "Columbian Supremo". Well, it was a fitting brand name, that's for sure!
A few days later, I was at the local grocery store ("Stop and Shop") looking over the various brands available in the coffee aisle, and THERE IT WAS! The same coffee they used in the diner was right there in the Stop and Shop coffee aisle!
Oh, I was positively electrified! I bought two bags and rushed right home and brewed a pot. And it was just fabulous!
Well, as luck would have it, the weeks passed by and the months passed by, and although I was able to get my new brand at the local grocery, I began to notice that the whole line was slowly migrating down to the bottom shelf. Finally, one day I went to get some and they were out...
The whole brand line had been elbowed out by some other brand. That's when I went online to see if they even still existed, and found this...
http://www.superiorcoffeeshop.com/ProductPage.asp?BrandType=2
...the seventeenth item down from the top.
How long will I keep drinking coffee? Well, it's a tough call, really. I've read the webpage I referenced above regarding the downside of coffee, and although I'm still drinking it I do have to admit that I stopped altogether for a few weeks right after I read it. And I also have to admit that when I started up again, I no longer woke up in the morning so "bright and chipper" as I did during that short period of no coffee.
I mean, I started back with just a cup on weekend mornings. But within a week, I was back to at least one a day...
If it was illegal, would I still want it?
So, from time to time I find myself in that parking lot during the morning rush hour watching people blindly racing across the empty lot, many times feverishly maneuvering for position with other cars, sometimes risking their lives, and I think, "Am I that crazy about this stuff, too?"
It's a macabre ballet. Since the cars can enter the lot from a couple of different places, and since the strategically placed exits out of the lot can accomodate a couple of choices for avoiding the traffic light, along with the "I wanna be first in line at the drive-thru" paths that can be taken across the lot, watching this activity is really very interesting.
It's a great place to sit in the taxi and wait for my next job to come through on the computer terminal. I like to sit in one particular area of the parking lot because it's right in the middle of all the action. Although there's a lot of interesting byplay all day long, the morning rush hour is the best.
Like bees drawn to honey, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, the clamoring and jockeying for position in the race across the lot to the Dunkin' Donuts is absolutely riveting.
For anyone who might be interested, these webpages invovle themselves in the history of coffee...
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/coffee/history.htm
http://sovrana.com/libstory.htm
...and, of course, there are plenty of others.
What I find interesting about the history of coffee is that it hit Europe around the middle ages, and may be partly responsible for adding fuel to the rennaissance. Prior to that, coffee had found its way to Turkey. Is it a coincidence that the Ottoman Empire's rise and growth occured during this time of coffee dominance? Who knows?
What we do know is that coffee, rather than tea, is the most popular legal stimulant in America. Dollar for dollar, coffee is second only to petroleum as a commodity. And I can see why this is whenever I watch the people in their cars jockeying for first place in the drive-thru at that Dunkin' Donuts.
There are the equivalent of about 12.7 cubic miles of ground coffee used to brew what the world drinks every year (400 billion cups, at two tablespoons per cup). It's the most successful over the counter drug in the world. Everyone keeps coming back for more, every day.
Everything about coffee makes it my number one drug of choice. It tastes great AND it cranks me up!
As with all drugs, however, there's a downside to be considered in all of this. A webpage here...
http://www.holistic-physician.com/articles/broch-coffee.htm
...can easily ruin anyone's enjoyment of coffee. So, if you don't want to quit drinking it, don't read that particular article. When you think you do need to cut down on your coffee drinking, though, that's a good place to get into the mood.
I didn't get into the coffee drinking scene until around the late 1970's. Until that point, I had never actually been exposed to a good cup of coffee. It was after I got divorced from my first wife in 1977-78 when I began hanging around a restaurant that brewed Mocha Java with spring water as their "house coffee". That was the point where coffee began to effect its fascinating magic upon me. Prior to that I did drink coffee at coffee breaks at work... out of a vending machine. It was truly horrible coffee, but it was the custom at that job to slurp this swill during our morning break.
The Mocha Java set the hook for me, and aside from a hiatus or two, this is where I began drinking coffee in earnest. During the 1980's, I spent a few years hanging out at another restaurant that had a "bottomless" cup of coffee. From that point, my coffee drinking settled in as a regular thing. But it was still only when I went to a restaurant.
Although the "Mr. Coffee" home coffee-maker came onto the scene in the 1970's, I didn't latch onto home coffee brewing until the late 1980's. The problem, mainly, was that brewing coffee at home remained a matter of not having decent ground coffee available at the local supermarket. It was when Dunkin' Donuts began selling bags of ground coffee that I ended up on the final leg of my journey into complete coffee saturation.
With various side trips into other blends from time to time, my coffee drinking centered around the Dunkin' Donuts blend for about a decade. Then one Saturday morning about five years ago, my wife and I went out for breakfast at a local diner, and were served the absolutely best tasting coffee either of us had ever had. It was just plain the best. And to make it even better, the coffee was served in those heavy "diner" style off-white mugs that have all those scars all over them from long years of use.
I mean, it was just perfect! So we went back there a few times, and each time that coffee was enough to set both of us off into coffee heaven! I finally asked the waitress what brand of coffee it was, and she came back to say that it was called "Superior" brand "Columbian Supremo". Well, it was a fitting brand name, that's for sure!
A few days later, I was at the local grocery store ("Stop and Shop") looking over the various brands available in the coffee aisle, and THERE IT WAS! The same coffee they used in the diner was right there in the Stop and Shop coffee aisle!
Oh, I was positively electrified! I bought two bags and rushed right home and brewed a pot. And it was just fabulous!
Well, as luck would have it, the weeks passed by and the months passed by, and although I was able to get my new brand at the local grocery, I began to notice that the whole line was slowly migrating down to the bottom shelf. Finally, one day I went to get some and they were out...
The whole brand line had been elbowed out by some other brand. That's when I went online to see if they even still existed, and found this...
http://www.superiorcoffeeshop.com/ProductPage.asp?BrandType=2
...the seventeenth item down from the top.
How long will I keep drinking coffee? Well, it's a tough call, really. I've read the webpage I referenced above regarding the downside of coffee, and although I'm still drinking it I do have to admit that I stopped altogether for a few weeks right after I read it. And I also have to admit that when I started up again, I no longer woke up in the morning so "bright and chipper" as I did during that short period of no coffee.
I mean, I started back with just a cup on weekend mornings. But within a week, I was back to at least one a day...
If it was illegal, would I still want it?
So, from time to time I find myself in that parking lot during the morning rush hour watching people blindly racing across the empty lot, many times feverishly maneuvering for position with other cars, sometimes risking their lives, and I think, "Am I that crazy about this stuff, too?"
posted by Jeff Barnard at 5:43 PM
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