On a recent trip, I remembered why I like to stay home.

Coffee.

After throwing back the covers from my rented room, I searched for the device that brews that sweet, morning nectar.

Behind a door, next to the $10 mini-bottles of booze, and the $5 bottles of water, sat the coffee maker.

It was so complicated; I put the water where the coffee pods go. After cleaning up the mess, and being willing to risk electrocuting myself for a cup, I was finally able to make coffee.

And it was terrible.

The pods said something in French, but since I don’t speak French, I didn’t know what I had made. All I knew was that it tasted like charcoal.

Throwing in the towel (a wet towel), I decided to go downstairs and find some good coffee. Since I wake up before the chickens, virtually nothing is open except a 7-11.

Having no car and no 7-11 nearby, I sat drinking a $5 bottle of water until the hotel restaurant opened.

I had plenty of time to think about how we as US citizens have mistreated our coffee and ourselves.

At some point in the not-too-distant-past, Americans lost our way with that heavenly, life-giving bean. We sacrificed perfection for perceived convenience. Gave up affordable for expensive. And worst of all, handed in taste for something I can only describe as burnt.

The young coffee consumers of today have no idea how much better their coffee could be.

And the diminished quality of Americans’ java can be directly connected to 50-year-old TV commercials, social media, and perceived mandatory compliance.

Before we examine how we got here, and how easily we could return to good cups of Joe, we first need to take a look at how our consumption of coffee began.

According to that bastion of historical accuracy – Wikipedia (said with all intended sarcasm), coffee was first consumed in the 1400s in Ethiopia.

Soon after, the folks who live in some of the monasteries in Yemen figured out that if you drank coffee, it would help keep you awake during prayers. A practical application that is still used in Southern Baptist churches today.

After that, folks in the Middle East discovered coffee, and bringing up the rear, my European ancestors did the same in the 1500s and 1600s.

The way coffee was originally prepared is the way we make it today. The beans were roasted, and then brewed.

Simple, right? Well, it should be.

As a child growing up on Beech Street in Ashdown, Arkansas, the first sign that I was awake was the sound of my parents’ percolator.

I am of the confirmed opinion that percolators are the right and only way to make coffee.

The cowboys had a good way to make it, too, so I give their campfire method a nod. But since hotel managers tend to frown on campfires in high-dollar hotels, I stick to my percolator method.

It’s easy. You fill the percolator with water; grind the beans and put them in the percolator basket; put the spreader cover over the basket; place the basket and cover over the pump stem; put the lid on the percolator; and start perking.

You can choose from a stovetop percolator, which needs no electricity, or the model that plugs into an outlet.

When I left home at 18, my mother gave me a skillet and her electric percolator. She had converted to a Mr. Coffee. This was in the middle of the TV ad campaigns that killed percolators.

Joe DiMaggio was hawking Mr. Coffee makers, Pat Boone was selling West Bend’s version of Mr. Coffee (which, like a percolator, didn’t need a paper filter), and other similar “drip” designs were everywhere you looked.

Suddenly, countertops across America sported drip coffee makers, and the percolators were relegated to yard sales, estate sales, or even worse, the trash.

I used my parents’ percolator until I found a pristine one at an estate sale. It had never been used, and I paid 50-cents for it.

It now sits in my office, where each Tuesday I prepare a pot for those in my area who’d like a cup.

“Mmmmm,” everyone always says. “This coffee is so good!”

Not something they say when they drink from the drip coffeemaker down the hall.

These folks are influenced by the ads that are now on social media, showing that everyone goes to buy a cup of alleged coffee from a MegaBucks nearby.

I say Buck the trend. Shop a yard or estate sale; look through grandma’s attic; be different.

Make your coffee correctly.

Just don’t build a campfire in your hotel room to do it. If you do, you may need those $10 mini-bottles of booze to put in the hotel manager’s French pod coffee.

At least, I think that’s coffee.

 

©2025 John Moore

John’s books, Puns for Groan People and Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, are available on his website TheCountryWriter.com, where you can also send him a message.