June 1999 feature by Steve Kleinedler |
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The Hard Stuff
The post office near my workplace is undergoing minor renovations. As a
courtesy to customers who may be inconvienced by this, they've set up a
table with free coffee and donuts. This coffee is not fancy, name-brand,
or catered. Instead, it's served from one of those large, stainless steel,
institutional-looking cylinders. As I sipped from their eco-hostile
polystyrene cups, I sighed contentedly . . . real coffee, the likes of
which I had not savored in many years.
I don't know when I became inured to overpriced gourmet coffee--it's all
that seems to be available anymore. Growing up in Michigan, this was the
coffee of church halls, auto plants, and family parties. My first cup,
when I was 12, was at my great-grandfather's funeral. I mixed in a heaping
dose of sugar and artificial powdered creamer (which I soon after began
eating out of the jar), and sat on a stuffed chair and sipped away with my
cousins and second cousins. Thereafter, I drank coffee only at funerals
and weddings until I reached college, where I would begin to consume it
regularly.
My coffee consciousness in the late 1970s was shaped by the insistent
commercials that urged everyone to be a 'coffee achiever.' In the
mid-1990s, when explaining these ads to people ten years my junior, they
looked at me blankly like I was making it up, like it was a Saturday Night
Live parody. But coffee achievement was big then; I guess I never noticed
that Julie McCoy, my cruise director, was a cokehead because I assumed she
was being a dutiful coffee achiever.
Perhaps, however, no other institution serves institutional coffee better
than the diner. Chicago (like many other Midwestern cities and towns) has
hundreds of these purveyors of Denver omelets and blueberry pancakes. They
also know coffee.
When I walk into a Chicago diner, and even in most restaurants, I smell
the freshly brewed coffee. At my table, laid before me, is a plate,
silverware, and an empty coffee cup. In places that truly understand the
ethos of dinerdom, within moments a server glides over and, simultaneously
with the greeting, pours me a cup of hot coffee.
(For those who don't drink coffee, the very first thing one does in such
places upon sitting down is to turn one's coffee cup upside down.)
For me, good service is synonymous with the server never allowing me cup
to go less than one-quarter empty. (This only holds true because I drink
coffee black. Those who take sugar and especially those who take cream
have their own conventions as to when refilling is appropriate, lest the
proper cream/sugar/coffee ratio go out of whack. Good servers are
cognizant of these customers' coffee orientation and would never presume
to upset the balance.)
So, imagine my shock in moving to Boston, which may have culture, but it
doesn't have a coffee culture. In Boston's too-far-and-few-between diners,
I will rarely be greeted by a coffee cup upon arrival. In restaurants, I'm
never greeted by coffee, and, in fact requests for coffee throw
seem to shock the server. When I am served coffee, I inevitably find the
bottom of the porcelain cup staring back up at me. Then, the server stops
by the table without a coffee carafe in hand.
Finally, this mystery was explained to me once when ordering lunch:
"You're from the Midwest, aren't you?"
"How could you tell?" I asked, fearing that my vowels had reacquired their
Michigan nasal qualities and done the Northern Cities Vowel Shift on me
again.
The reply: "They always get coffee first in the Midwest."
Then it hit me. In Boston, one drinks coffee as an after dinner drink,
not before, not with. It's tragic, but it's another aspect of New England
I've been forced to accept. It makes moments, like the one in the post
office, all the more special.
Over the past decade,
sadly, the availability of institutional coffee took
a back seat. With the diminished presence of pubs and the rise of cafes,
the expensive allure of coffee seems to have increased profit margins
handsomely. And, for several years, I've gone along with it, plunking down
up to $1.50 for a basic black coffee, more for the fancy stuff.
This morning, that all changed. The post office reminded me of the
simplicity of coffee. It doesn't have to be an overroasted paean to
conspicuous consumption. Instead, without its pretentious trappings, I am
reminded that cofffee is merely a pure, hearty vessel of caffeine--which
is exactly what I want.
in the junk drawer
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