Coffee

 As Frank Sinatra so heartily sang:

Way down among Brazilians, 

Coffee beans grow by the billions, 

So they've got to find those extra cups to fill.

They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. . . .

Really, is there any other product that fills the heart, the senses, the imagination more than a solid cup of hot coffee. Ah, the aroma, the fascination, the romance, whether sipping cafe in Parisian cafes, caffe in Italian bars, or watching Gordon Lightfoot singing for the price of a coffee. And the medicinal purposes: for hangover repair, for boosting the metabolism or for staying up all night. What legal product could be better. Just sipping coffee while remembering the previous evening’s escapades is pure joy or misery.

I’ve drunk coffee pretty much every day of my life. Growing up, there was not one day in memory that did not begin with coffee. I’m not talking about when I was older, I mean my very first memory. Each morning began with a small bowl of caffe latte. Mom would prepare toast, then heat the milk and brew the coffee. We were then served a bowl of equal parts milk and coffee long before lattes were fashionable. It was warming, awakening and fortifying for the cold weather in which we were about to set out to school. Toast and coffee was so much better for us than those other breakfast options that non-Italians consumed. 

I remember a ‘health’ class in junior high wherein the teacher was extolling the virtues of proper nutrition. To prove her point about how breakfast was the most important meal of the day, she asked each student to relate what they had for breakfast. And so, each one of us stood and related what was served for breakfast that morning. The responses were fairly ordinary: cereal with milk and fruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, OJ, grapefruit juice, sausage, oatmeal, etc. An occasional chocolate milk drew titters and attention. How boring. When it was my turn, I proudly and loudly stood and said “coffee and toast”. Wait, what? The entire class silenced. I thought the teacher would faint. I had what? I further explained about the half milk - half coffee concoction that mom served along with heavily buttered toast; what could be better. She stared at me with such incredulity, then moved on to the next student.

Just to be on the safe side though the morning ended with a delicately worded telephone call to my mother asking for an appearance to discuss the ramifications of our breakfast eating habits and how coffee was affecting our bodies. Mom listened patiently, avowed that she had seen the light and would alter her breakfast serving habits. Of course she did nothing of the kind, other than to give lip service to misguided folk who did not understand the benefits of coffee for people of all ages. Unlike those children who had sweet cereals or juices or some other overdose of sugar along with the rest of their morning meal, we did not experience an 11 am crash from an 8 am sugar high. No sir. We were evenly paced, highly energized troublemakers from dawn to dusk.

After my school years passed, I spent a year in Europe, mostly in Italy but traveled to neighboring countries too. Everywhere I went coffee bars abounded, long before Starbucks arose on every street corner in this country. No signs said “we will not serve minors”. Children stood next to adults tossing back their morning coffee. Today the world has caught on to what my mother already knew: coffee is this world’s ambrosia. 

Front Porches

 During the summers, we kids were trotted off to our grandparents’ farm homes, either the Timmins grandparents or the Woodstock grandparents. Our Woodstock grandparents had a screened in three seasons porch that was, in turn, surrounded by an outdoor porch. The three seasons porch was not heated and air conditioning was a long way into the future but it was a lovely room during the summer. It was very big, according to a six year old’s standards of ‘big’. Three walls were covered with screened windows that allowed the early morning breeze to cool the room and the adjoining outdoor porch gave just enough shade to discourage the day’s heat from finding its way indoors. The room was outfitted with a long old sideboard and an equally long wooden dining table that was covered with an oilcloth. The table could seat eight to twelve people on mismatched wooden chairs of various styles and quality. Each morning our grandmother would serve us three “early birds” (“uccellli” she called us in her Italian) breakfast out there while we watched the chickens strutting around outside. It also allowed the adults to watch us running around while they enjoyed their later breakfast in relative peace after we had been shooed outdoors. As an added bonus, we could watch an explosive summer thunderstorm in the relative safety of the screened porch or be afforded protection  from the sunset loving appearances of mosquitos. Come the impending fall, my grandfather, with the help of dad and-or various uncles would all help to install the winter storm windows. Then the door to the kitchen would be shut and that would signal summer’s end and our return to the city.

Our home, like most of the homes in the neighborhood, had a front porch. There were three steps that led to the front door landing. There was a green rail that matched the color of the front door and the white balusters matched the front window trim. 

That front porch could have told many stories during my teenage years but the most horrifying story that the front porch could relate took place during my senior high school year. It was the night of the annual Sadie Hawkins dance. We girls were allowed to ask boys to the school dance and so I invited a certain young lad to attend the dance with me. The evening went well; we danced, we talked, we laughed and then he walked me home. There we stood, on the front porch, hemming and hawing and working up to a big good night kiss when, much to my shock, my father walked out the front door with a shotgun in his hand. My young man levitated off the front porch and onto the street, gulping his “I was bringing her home, sir” as he marched, very quickly down the street. I stood stock still, unable to move, utterly outraged, I was so stunned at what had just occurred. My dad, in turn, looked at me with a vague and vacant “what’s happening?” look on his face. When my mouth finally opened, the only word that came out was “what!?!” He very innocently said that he was on his way to meet a hunting buddy. They had a long drive and wanted to be hunt ready at dawn. Yes, it truly was hunting season, but I strongly suspected that he did that on purpose and that he secretly enjoyed every minute of it.