Ode To A Cup Coffee

Where would we be without coffee?

Coffee, you elixir of life, you lifter of spirits, you happiness in a mug, you cup of sunshine; we owe you so much.

Coffee has had a pretty good run the last twenty years or so.

Once upon a time coffee was just one more breakfast option, right there with prune juice and an English Muffin.

But sometime in the mid-eighties late-night TV became all the rage, (thank you David Letterman and Saturday Night Live) and the need to stay awake during the work day became a pivotal challenge of the go-go times we found ourselves in.

Coffee should send late-night television a big "thank you" bouquet of flowers.

And once upon a time tea (the hot drink favored by the Red Coats in colonial days) was the big kid on the block.

Tea enjoyed a run of about five hundred years of popularity thanks to the British Empire and their co-opting of everything cool within their borders. (Which famously, the sun never set on.)

Coffee is like tea's little brother who somehow became massively successful due to simply being in the right place at the right time.

There are about three million cool ways to consume coffee to two ways for tea; traditionally in hot water or in the "iced" version. (I'm sure the British could enlighten me to a few more.)

Perhaps that's why we Americans favor one hot beverage over the other, it's "our" drink. (I guess we forgot about a couple of thousand years of Arabic culture where coffee was a central feature of a proper table.)

Have you ever tried to get a "proper" cup of coffee in a foreign country?

In Spain they favor the tiny, thimble sized, cup of "café" which we know over here as an espresso.

This miniature morning jolt may do its job, but if you are looking to nurse a cup of coffee, Spain is no country for you. ("Thank you for this darling, child's tea party sized cup of coffee Francisco, now run along and get the adult sized cup will you?")

On my first visit there two years ago I was jonesing for a traditional cup of American style coffee one morning to help me shake off the effects of jet lag and to sip pensively as the Spanish countryside passed by the windows of my train car. (Didn't Hemingway sit for hours in Spanish cafes' in all those short stories I read in college? Did he have thousands of those tiny cups littering his table as he typed away?)

In the fine, capital city of Madrid there exists exactly one Starbucks, and it opens promptly at 10 am. This is because the average Spaniard gets up at 9:30 am. (I'm not sure how this county gets anything done; perhaps they should drink bigger cups of coffee.)

The trouble with the Starbucks opening at 10 am is that my morning train left at 9 am and I had woken up in the hotel this particular morning from a dream where I was enjoying a whole pot of coffee.

The kindly Spanish baristas, who were sitting inside drinking coffee from large cups and enjoying their morning, took pity on this tired American as I pressed my face to the window like an orphan in a Charles Dickens novel, and opened early for me.

I tried not to moan out loud when I had my first sip, and I did my best to hide the beverage as long as I could from my contentious, Spanish-culture-loving wife.

Where would I be without coffee? It's a writer's best friend.

So here is a toast to coffee: "To coffee, your teeth staining tendencies are but a small price to pay for staying awake behind the wheel, good conversation...and a regular bowel movement."

And adios to you, small cup of "café."

Oh, and a special thank you goes out to my lovely wife Julie, who got me the best gift a "coffee dog" can get for Christmas, a Kerig, single serving coffee machine.