Coffee love ~ my column from the weekend paper

I hear people from time to time say they don’t like coffee. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around that statement. It might seem like a twisted judge of character, but I’m not sure I trust people who don’t drink coffee. 

I’ve been drinking coffee since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. A historical article said that on D-Day, General Eisenhower locked himself in a trailer and swilled coffee all day, waiting for reports to come in. I’m guessing he was on top of things.

My mom was a coffee lover too, and although I was still in the first grade writing with fat pencils and eating paste, she saw no harm in giving me a cup of coffee. It had cream in it to thin it down, but I never got sleepy in class after I started drinking coffee.

I tend to get a little snarky when I don’t get my morning java, but my wife Jilda is like a pit bull with a toothache if anyone speaks to her before she gets her daily caffeine infusion.

Several years ago, when I worked for MaBell, Jilda, and I joined a coffee club. Every month we received a shipment of coffee from around the world. As an incentive to join, they sent us a coffee grinder, a decorative canister, and a puppy. Just kidding about the puppy. 

The coffee came from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Istanbul, and countries with names I could not pronounce. Each one smelled like heaven in a bag. 

A few years in, we would forget to respond to offers, and the coffee started coming too quickly. We couldn’t drink it fast enough. It was getting expensive, so we canceled the subscription.

Tom Petty is one of my favorite musicians of all time. His music weaves through my memories from the '70s up until he died in 2017. He loved coffee, too.

I read an interview a while back, written by the author who wrote Petty’s biography. One story that didn’t make it into the final book was about Petty’s quest for the perfect cup of coffee.

The story said that Petty and his wife were out driving and stopped at a diner. The coffee they served was near perfect. Petty was a shy person, but he asked the waitress what kind it was. The manager came out and told Petty that it was Maxwell House – "Good to the last drop."

The manager agreed to show Petty how they made the coffee. When he went to the kitchen, he saw a Bunn coffeemaker brewing a pot of fresh coffee. 

Petty installed two of the professional-grade coffeemakers in his kitchen. He installed two because he never wanted to wait for a pot to brew. He always used Maxwell House.

Not long after Jilda and I read this, we invested in a Bunn coffeemaker. It’s the best coffeemaker we’ve ever owned. We tried Maxwell House, but we prefer a different brand of Joe. We buy a wheelbarrow load of Community dark roast coffee each time we go to COSTCO.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I can tell by the aroma from the kitchen that a fresh pot of coffee is ready. Cheers.