Unabashed

I’m feeling very coffee today. The press of fall is coming nearer and nearer (even though it’s still 85 degrees and humid). I never was a coffee drinker, and I’m still not very religious about it, until I did my stint in the Navy, where coffee was almost regulatory, no matter how foul it might taste. But then, you can get used to almost anything when your wakeup call is 4am. The song went: “The coffee in the Navy / they say is mighty fine / it looks like muddy water / and it tastes like turpentine.”

I drank my share of it for a couple of years, bleary eyed and struggling to hold on to consciousness just long enough to make sure I didn’t fall overboard. But then I was sent to Cartagena, Columbia for a six-week duty assignment, and coffee was officially discovered. They served it at the hotel we were staying in every morning whether you asked for it or not in pretty China cups with saucers. It was the first time I ever had really good coffee, and before I left I bought about ten pounds of it to bring home. My family promptly devoured it, although I did get to keep one pound for myself. My uncle began mixing his pound with his regular coffee to make the Columbian last longer.

After that, the coffee situation went back to normal, but from then on I was bitter about the swill they pumped into us once we were back aboard ship. My future travels didn’t do much to help: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Italy… such magnificent coffee! I still can’t wrap my head around it, and I shop for coffee here and there in the States but nothing ever seems to compare. Maybe through The Tao of Coffee I can rekindle some of those great coffee moments, when coffee seems as integral to the day as opening your eyes, and the flavor seems to cause every cell in your body to energize and sparkle.

Some beautiful coffee images from Jamaica.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Coffee