By John Estridge
Luckily, for me, the worst thing that has happened to me in this pandemic, and it’s really not a bad thing, is my coffee addiction has gone amuck.
Amuck, sometimes spelled amok, is one of the words I really savor, but I rarely, if ever, get to use it. If Godzilla ever attacks the Whitewater Valley, — and hey, 2020 doesn’t have too far to go with pandemics, Saharan dust storms, the murder hornets and flying snakes so anything is possible – the word amuck will be in the headline: like “Godzilla runs amuck through the Whitewater Valley.”
Like many adult beverages I now savor, coffee was an acquired taste. In the fall of 1975, my then-skinny butt was at Indiana State University. Why I chose ISU is a long story involving my sister, Karen, but it was not a good choice.
Many stories of my youth begin with “my sister, Karen.” It is sort of like “hold my beer and watch this.” At least, there are usually the same results in both.
ISU is in Terre Haute. Anyone who has been to Terre Haute should understand I don’t really have to say anything else. Whenever the sun shone, or didn’t shine, or it was dark or the opposite of dark, Terre Haute stank. I was told it was from the Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks Factory. I have never been a lover of that product because of that.
The campus is very urban and at that long ago time I was there, the locals loved to play “try to kill the walking, sleepy, hungover college student” as they tried to cross the busy street to get to class or back to their minuscule dorm room.
ISU is in the middle of the hood, but that is like saying a street in Oakland is in the hood. One had to watch oneself when they were out at night. I’m not talking black and white. A chapter of the Cloven Hooves motorcycle gang had some houses close by the campus. They were always fun to encounter on a dark night while one is having trouble walking.
Anyway, I started drinking coffee as a freshman at ISU. One thing is I thought it was expected of a college student to drink coffee, and it made me feel grown up to have a cup of coffee with my breakfast. In my first semester, I actually got up in time to eat breakfast. I was a good student with goals, and I tried to get good grades and learn things.
The second semester I met drugs and females who actually liked me, the females not the drugs. I had never experienced the latter before so it sort of had my head spinning, and not in a good way, well maybe in a good way.
Again, anyway, I did not like coffee, but it was really my first experience so I soldiered on to the point I am today where I LOVE coffee and would drink just coffee if possible, well, except for beer and bourbon.
When I was very young and I got sick, I slept on the couch in my parents’ living room, which was downstairs. That was so I was closer to the toilet if anything came out either end. As parents with little kids know, nothing really helps with the two bad things that leave a child’s body when he or she is sick. Rarely does a young child make it to the bathroom. But I guess they wanted to give me a fighting chance.
Mom and dad got up very early because we lived in Liberty, and dad worked first shift at Perfect Circle in Richmond. He was a self-taught toolmaker. Usually, when sick, I did not sleep well, but even if I were asleep, the smell of coffee percolating would wake me up and I, more often than not, would go into the kitchen to sit with them while they ate breakfast. Doing that was sort of foreign to all of us and was more than a little awkward. However, I was always taken with how they seemed to enjoy coffee. They would each drink a couple of cups at breakfast and then dad would take a green metal thermos full of coffee with him to work.
A few years ago I read an article that drip coffee, think pods and Keurig-type coffee makers, is far superior to the percolator of my parents’ time. However, a recent article I read said the percolators are making a comeback. Sort of like with the COVID, I don’t know if I can believe anything I read, because the experts’ informed information seems to keep changing.
However, I really like my Hamilton Beach pod coffee maker and my flavored coffee.
My paternal grandparents, Henry and Stella, poured their coffee into the little saucers people sit their coffee cup on and then would drink from the saucer. I had to wait until we left the house to ask a question of my parents because in the early 60s in my family, children were supposed to be seen and not heard.
So on the ride back home, I asked my parents why they did that and was told my grandparents did that to cool their coffee before they drank it. I have not seen anyone do that after they left the earth. It might have been a thing with that generation or people from southeastern Kentucky. I do not know.
My first mother in law did not like me, and I really did not understand that then, and I still don’t understand it now. What’s not to like? However, my second mother in law really liked me, and I think coffee was a big part of that. I don’t ever remember drinking coffee and talking to my ex mother in law. However, I always was drinking coffee when I talked with my second mother in law. Coffee seemed to be always brewing at her house, and the words flowed with the caffeine.
Before I got fired, I was a newspaper editor for many years. I drank a cup of coffee before going to work and then I would drink a second around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I usually had to proofread stuff or type stuff, and I would just fight sleep. But if I could drink a cup of Joe, then it gave me a needed lift.
An aside here concerning the word Joe for coffee:
Driftaway.coffee gave four possibilities on why coffee is sometimes called cup of Joe. The one I like the best is Martindale Coffee trademarked the term as its founder was Joe Martindale. He was a larger-than-life person, and people began calling for a cup of Joe.
Anyway, during the shutdown, I had one cup after I got up with a little cream added, well a lot of cream. If I had time — and what did we all have much of during the quarantine, but a lot of time – I would drink a second cup. Most of the time, I take my second cup of coffee on my porch. My Long Suffering Wife Ruth purchased some too comfortable slider rattan chairs for the porch, and I am spending too much time sitting there doing nothing. Well, maybe not nothing because I usually have a Kindle in hand or I am writing something like I am doing now.
Then, came my traditional time of 2 to 3 p.m., when I always drank my second cup of coffee before I was fired. I kept up that practice during the shutdown but now it is my third cup. Again, if it isn’t too hot, the porch is a nice place to watch the world go by as I sip that wonderful liquid. And after supper, a cup of coffee seems like a nice dessert since I was diagnosed with diabetes in October 2019, and I can no longer eat good-tasting, sweet desserts.
During the shutdown, Ruth and I were able to keep our coffee supply stocked without asking family members to purchase it for us when we had family members going to the store for us. We ordered from Amazon.
We thoroughly washed our hands after opening the packages for the coffee.
So, I am up to four cups of coffee a day. I have been considering five. I will probably have to cut something out of my schedule to do it, but I really do like my coffee.