Making coffee .

11 October 2016

I am making coffee this afternoon. I did not have any in the morning. I drank a cup of tea, however. Earl Grey, with honey. I shall, God willing and I live for the next few minutes and the coffee percolates well and safe, I shall take honey in my coffee. In just a few minutes from now. God willing and the creek don’t rise, as the saying goes. Yes. As. The saying. Goes.

13:20 daylight savings time in Southern California.

13:21.

13:22. The perking has started. I get up to turn down the heat on the gas stove. The gas range. The cook top. Only a hundred and some years ago and my great grandmother was cooking on a wood burning stove. That is an art I would like to learn some day.

For many years I have day-dreamed of cooking on a big wood-burning stove. Like the ones I saw for sale in those old Sears Roebuck catalogues that were so fashionable thirty years ago, when I was younger and still day dreaming every bit as much as I am nowadays. Now. A. Days.

13:24.

Percolate for six minutes. I understand now why everyone switched over to drip and filter coffee makers thirty years ago. Mr. Coffee and all the rest have conquered the home-brewing world. I understand. It is so much easier. Just fill it up and push the button. No need to watch the clock to make sure it does not perk – or percolate – too long. No worries about the coffee getting over-done, and taste rotten burnt ugh no no no no worries about that.

But I like the old ways. I do not have a wood-burning stove, but when it came time to buy another “coffee maker” I decided to get an old-style percolator, like my parents had in the 1950s, before Mr. Coffee conquered the world with his filter-drip ease-of-lifestyle.

Well, you can even pre-set the coffee makers with a built-in digital clock and go to bed at night knowing that when you wake up tomorrow at X-hundred hours, your coffee will be ready and waiting for you.

But no.

13:32. I sip my first cup. Dark and sweet.

Like my soul.

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