I Broke the Percolator

I broke it. The coffee percolator worked well until I dropped it and the little glass top shattered. A percolator has so few parts that if something goes south it should be fixable. I didn’t think of looking for a replacement for the glass top. You can’t think of everything.

Hardware stores sold percolator parts, but it is hard enough to find a hardware store today.

I shopped a big box store for a new percolator, but there were none there nor in the next store.

Coffee today is most popularly made by hot water flowing through coffee grounds in a filter.

The Keurig style coffeemaker, using little plastic pods of coffee, or something, sits in a corner and is rarely used. The pods are expensive and make uneven cups. The hot chocolate is too thin, and I’m still making up my mind on how much I like it.

There are all sorts of instant and freeze dried coffees, but none of them comes close to a freshly brewed cup.

My friend Frank Johnston didn’t drink coffee and didn’t keep it around, but he had an old French Press. When I visited him, I had to take my own coffee, but he supplied the water.

We have a French Press: It is warmed by filling it with hot water while you heat up another batch of hot water in the microwave for making the coffee.

I used to spend a lot of time on DC-9 airplanes. The airlines that flew that equipment produced the best bad coffee in the air. DC-9 coffee was made from a concentrate and by adding hot water. Like I said, the best bad coffee.

For fall-back we have a Corning Ware ceramic coffee pot with little blue flowers that was a gift in 1967. It is heavy and takes a long time to heat up, but it will perk coffee.

I wondered who drinks the most coffee. The Kansas Woman guessed New Yorkers, but we both got a surprise.

The website Zippia.com states that the top ten states by coffee consumption are Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, Idaho, Rhode Island, Oregon, Kansas, and Iowa. New York State is # 45 and Georgia is #48.

My father told me that the first sound he heard each morning was his sister grinding coffee.

Now we don’t have to grind coffee, but continued from page

some do because they can.

Jim Watts of Catoosa County departed Georgia for the west before 1900 and was a real cowboy. He told me that cowboys survived on coffee and beans. The cook roasted the beans in a dutch oven, and the coffee grinder was screwed to the side of the chuck wagon.

I’m still trying to make up my mind on the Keurig, but the KW pointed out that the whole world is a hardware store today via the Internet.

Yep, she was right, and a replacement glass globe is making its way here as we speak.

joenphillips@yahoo.com