Coffee

First things first. Coffee is a first thing. On May 11, '05 Steve Larson asked me if there was anything he could bring to the house. Coffee was my suggestion. Steve arrived with a couple of tall Starbucks coffees. I sent him back out with more specific instructions--coffee for the masses. Just this fall we tossed the barely used green can of Folgers Decaffeinated. The full decaffeinated supply didn't survive the initial week I suppose.

Coffee has a role in every emotion--more than one hot cup of coffee has been poured in sorrow, joy, and on someones lap in anger. It's a player in economics and debate. I remember using a comment that went like this: "As for your opinion, that and 10 cents will get you a cup of coffee." Where? I'd like to have a dime back for every Two dollar cup of coffee I bought this decade.

Coffee is the first casualty of the economy. Rise with the tide, you'll be rolled by the flow. Coffee is the first to go. All across America I assure you billion dollar companies are making changes in the coffee room. Business is simple, either make money or cut costs. Light and heat might be gianormous figures on a spread sheet, but coffee is the tallest weed. If it's connected to Seattle, dark as fertile soil, and so strong it takes expensive flavor syrups to be palatable, it's going or gone. The last packets of the expensive stuff is buried in a drawer beneath the rejected bean, "full flavored" package of regular Joe.

Joe's a survivor. He's gone to war for this country. He was there in the depression. Joe was a victim of his own success. Pushed to the sidelines. Relegated to the minor leagues of coffee---the greasy spoons where he built his reputation in the first place. Traded hundreds of dozens of times a day for a couple of nickles, Joe ignited the brain cells by the billions and drowned cigarette butts by the cartons.

From 1948 to... oh about last month, those brains built an economic powerhouse unlike any the world had ever seen. So powerful was the economy industrial coffee/espresso/latte churning machines had kitchens built around them. Not just at the office but at home too. The commute from home to office, no longer counted in miles, but hours spawned the Mud Huts. Little houses on the fringe of parking lots, easy on easy off. "I have to leave now, I'm running late. I won't have time to stop for a coffee." Out the door we ran with our silver, adult sippy cup.

Like the last package of Steep & Brew that I pulled out of the back of the bottom of the drawer this morning, the little white huts will be vanishing. Well, maybe not vanishing, but they will be closing. Maybe best that they don't vanish--they're affordable housing. Coffee's done.