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COLUMNS:   Another Day in the Country

Contributing writer

When my mother was a little girl, her younger brother, still in a highchair, used to call, “Coffee-mulk. Coffee-mulk.” Evidently, he loved the taste of coffee.

“Art could barely talk,” Mom said when she told the story about her favorite brother, “but he’d call out, ‘coffee-mulk,’ banging the tray of his table and Momma would pour some coffee into a mug and dilute it with milk, and give it to him.”

Mom would shake her head and say “but you know it wasn’t coffee at all — we couldn’t afford coffee then. Momma baked wheat until it was dark brown, ground it and that’s what we used for every-day coffee.”

She grinned.

“It was just like Postum is today,” mom said.

My mom and dad never drank coffee. They didn’t consider it healthy, so they drank Postum laced with Carnation canned milk — Coffee-Mulk. Postum was standard fare at the Ehrhardt breakfast table and I hated it.

“It tastes like dishwater,” I complained.

Never touched it. Never drank coffee either, but I loved the smell of it.

Fresh out of college, working for the government as a lowly GS-2 Clerk, it became my job to make the men in The Bureau of Public Roads their continual pot of coffee.

I had to learn to do it —having never made coffee before — was this what I went to college for? The only perk was opening a fresh can of coffee. There’d be this little “whooof” as the air escaped and this wonderful aroma — that I liked.

I must have been 30-something, living in Napa Valley before I started drinking coffee. When friends would say, “Let’s get a cup of coffee,” I’d get half a cup, fill it the rest of the way with hot water and a little milk —my own version, I guess of Uncle Art’s Coffee-mulk. In California, at all the fancy coffee shops, coffee is serious business. It’s strong — I think they call it “full bodied,” and it can knock your socks off.

When I came to Kansas I finally found coffee more to my liking.

“Weak,” my sister would mumble as she eyed the cup. “This is like dishwater. You can see the bottom of the cup.”

Normally, I have coffee about once a week — while I watch the Sunday Morning Show and eat my breakfast, pretending I’m at my favorite Napa Valley restaurant.

You would not, however, call me a coffee connoisseur. My sister, on the other hand, loves coffee. She ponders in the morning just what delectable kind of coffee she will have with her morning toast.

“Will it be Starbucks? French roast? Organic imported from the Himalayas?”

Of course, her coffee is always freshly ground. She also has a special percolator that she uses alternating with a French coffee press. For her, coffee is an experience. When I’m at her house I just dilute it with a little water and I’m fine.

If I have beans, I do grind them on my Sunday morning, once a week, coffee-making binge. If not, I use whatever is in the coffee canister — sometimes it’s a mix of what we’ve had the past few weeks, months, years? If someone leaves their flavored coffee (we only offer Folgers at the B&B) I won’t let Jess throw it out — “Give it to me,” I say. “I’ll use it. I’m not picky.”

By the time you get to the bottom of my coffee canister, who knows what you’ll encounter. Don’t tell. It’s conservation. It’s our little secret.

This morning I made coffee. Jess, who usually brings her own pot of coffee for our Sunday morning ritual, had gotten lax. She found her favorite cup in the cupboard, poured her coffee, and took a sip.

“You must have used water out of the tap for this coffee and rural water must have just added their monthly dose of chlorine. Why don’t you use bottled water?” she asked.

Silly me, I thought coffee would mask the taste of chlorine. To me, coffee is coffee. It’s hot. It’s dark brown. It’s coffee. Now that I’ve already sinned with chlorinated water, she’s barely sipping my brew.

After a few more cautious, tentative swallows, Jess stops short.

“I know what this is. Tell me you didn’t mix Hazelnut flavored coffee into that Starbucks that I gave you. We had that for Keith and Vicky months ago,” Jess said.

She’s horrified.

It’s Sunday morning, just another day in the country, and I didn’t want to waste it.

Last modified Nov. 10, 2009

 

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