TheBanyanTree: Another Coffee Story...

[North Ms Pamela J]

... that I remembered reading Darlin Dee's.

The town I live in is really pretty small, considering that it homes a
huge air station, but then the world is pretty small anyway.

I live on a corner, my long house faces one road, but my driveway on
the side faces a cul de sac, and that's my address. So my 'next door'
neighbor Carol is really sideways to my house, and from my back porch
I can yell over the fence to her in her backyard. Meanwhile, across
from my driveway, and across from her, lives Adeline, Carol's mom.

(I met Carol when we moved in about 5 years ago, Adeline when her
house was built about 4 years ago, and in between found out that I'd
known Sue, Carol's sister and Adeline's daughter for the last 20
years! Anyway.)

Remember a couple of months ago when the bad storms here in the east
started? Sachet and them were going to get their first big one and
terrible storms were predicted all up the coast.

Here in Havelock, we didn't get a drop of precipitation. Oh it was
cold, ok, it was *freezing*, but we didn't have snow. Or rain. Or
sleet. Or electricity.

That's right. No electricity. For reasons we were unclear about, we
woke up that weekend morning with no lights. Now, if I'm home and in
my usual routine, weekend mornings I pull myself out of bed, throw on
my robe/sweats/something, pull my hair up and run water over my face,
grab my cigs, and head over to Adeline's for coffee. And crosswords.

Adeline gets two newspapers. A sorta local one, and the Raleigh paper
also. So that means she has *two* crossword puzzles, jumbles, and
cryptograms. So we each grab a pencil and a paper and start in.
Occasionally we take breaks to solve world problems or local issues,
or to break out the dictionary, but always, always, we're drinking our
coffee.

Adeline uses 8 o'clock whole beans, and there's a science to the
making. She fills the perfectly clean carafe with filtered water and
pours it into the maker. Then she puts three scoops of beans into the
grinder, and all talking is suspended whilst she counts to 20 while
grinding. Then she pours the grinds into a filter laid on the counter
and uses a small paintbrush to sweep any remaining grinds out of the
grinder cap. Then she puts the filter into the machine's basket, and
she turns that baby on! (Then the bag of beans goes back into the
fridge, the cord on the grinder gets wound back up and secured and the
grinder goes in the cabinet, the scoop and brush go back into their
ziploc, and that goes into the cabinet as well!)

Adeline puts 3 scoops of sugar and a quarter cup of milk in her mug,
then fills it up with coffee. I put one ice cube in my mug (for the
first cup) and then fill it with coffee, and using a teaspoon, measure
out one spoonful of half-n-half. I don't like it too hot, or too
white, or too dark.

But remember that morning three paragraphs ago when I told you we
woke up to no electricity?? Well, *that* really messed up ALL our
plans! No electricity, no coffee.

Of course Adeline has more than one coffee maker, geez, this woman has
more than one of everything! (She is the 'go-to chick' in this
neighborhood!) In fact, Adeline has an old percolator from the day,
and unlike *me*, she even knew how to use it. Too bad her stove was
electric as well.

We looked across at Carol's (where a gas stove lived) but nobody
seemed up and about so we considered firing up the grill and taking
our chances. Then we decided desperate times called for desperate
measures!

We bundled up, grabbed the percolator, the emergency stash of coffee
grounds she kept and my half-n-half, and we headed across the street
to ring the bell.

We woke 'em *all* up! Hey! *We* needed coffee, Carol and her husband
and two sons and three che-wa-was could just get over it!!

So Carol fired up the gas range and Adeline measured and filled, and
we waited for that first pot. It wasn't super fast like Dee's. Felt
slower than mud in fact... And by now there were a LOT of people
waiting and wanting. It was a science, divvying and dividing that
first pot!

Anyway... Iv'e rambled. That's my story! (Sorry! Blame Dee....
*SHE* made me remember!)

Pam