1958 Christmas
Grandma and Grandpa type pot
Copper bottom with insides set aside
Slow, but made hot coffee and cleaned out good if moldy
Pyrex stove pot with inside parts for cooking

Let’s talk a little more about coffee and coffee pots. Do you remember when you started drinking it? As posted before, I learned early how to dip my sugar lump into my grandfather’s morning coffee. That, if course was BOILED on the stove java.

Let’s think about the coffee pots we have used or our parents used. Never mind they are considered ANTIQUE pots by now. Let’s think about the people in our lives that took coffee with them in their vehicles long before, well, the craze of $5.00 cup of coffee.

The first pot I remember is a metal unit at my grand parent’s. There was nothing inside. Grandma just put water in it and sprinkled grounds on the top and it cooked. After it cooked, it sat for a few minutes, I realized much later that was to settle the coffee grounds. I DO NOT remember a coffee grinder, does that mean they bought their coffee always ground?

Mother liked the glass Pyrex pot best. She could take it completely apart and wash every piece. Since she only made coffee in the morning, she washed it after breakfast. Double making didn’t happen unless someone came to visit and coffee was served. The pot, all gleaming clean, stored on the back burner of the Maytag gas stove.

In the summer of 1958, we had pigs. One was raised for my grandparents, another for Harry, and the third was ours. For the feeding of those pigs, I got $5.00 from my Uncle Harry which I spent on my parents for a coffee carafe for Christmas. The same Christmas, Daddy bought mother a drip o later and Greg bought them individual carafes. That pot functioned differently and it is remembered it was TOO slow!

The next pot was an electric percolator, that took 20 minutes and was also too slow, although the coffee was hot.

As newly married persons, our first pot was a West Bend percolator. It took about 20 minutes to brew a full pot. Neither of us where much for drinking coffee but we did have a pot. We made coffee once and ‘forgot’ about the rest of the coffee in the put until we went to clean it and it was full of mold. The pot had been unplugged. It was stainless so it cleaned up well and didn’t have any residue from sitting.

No doubt, Daddy sat at the table in the early seventies timing the new, improved method of coffee brewing, called Mr. Coffee. He was happy to see a five minute pot even if it wasn’t as hot as he would have liked it, nor was it as full bodied as he liked it. Mother was happy, all the oils were in the filter and the glass pot was easy to clean and sparkled after it was washed.

An old expression was, "He likes it so strong the spoon dissolves when he stirs his sugar in." Old Trunks wonders if people buy those $5.00 cups of coffee because they want that full bodied flavor one doesn't get from the home pots that take five minutes. It doesn't seem to matter how much coffee one puts in, it still lacks the robust flavor. Perhaps those folks need to go to the camping department and buy a camping coffee pot and boil their coffee on the stove to get everything out of the bean.

I am remembering Julia Rye. She had Parkinson's. When you visited her at the farm, she would make coffee. She would measure the coffee into the pot using her hands. She did not remove the coffee from the stove because of her diagnosis yet, she always knew when to tell Oliver, her son, to take it off. What was it about her coffee that made it so good? Was it the water? The aroma? The full bodied taste? The amount? Or was it that it mixed with the other scents in the farm house?

His name is Richard, he and I were in high school together. He writes: I have some interesting coffee makers so if you need pictures, I will send some. We still have our original corning coffee maker, a siphon coffee maker and press pots. We bought the siphon one in 1983 and used it almost daily until our daughters bought us another espresso unit this Christmas. I will post script when I get the pictures!

BUZZ!!!!!!

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