Taking Off and Landing

I’ve nearly given up on trying to find a good cup of coffee in Waco. For a long while, I was frequenting a local coffee shop, and though it’s good to go to for the atmosphere in the summer after the undergrads clear out, after six years I’ve brought myself to the point where I’m strong enough to say….that the coffee sucks. It’s really a shame, because the vibe is good most of the time, and there’s really not that many places to go that don’t scream “CORPORATE CONGLOMERATE”.

I mean, seriously, I like Starbucks, but last time I went in, upon approaching the bar to order a cup of tea, the blonde-haired barrista yelled in my face, “CORPORATE CONGLOMERATE!!!! YAAAAAHHHH!!!”. This was right before she steam-cleaned the cashier and ran out the door babbling about unborn chickens or something. Kinda bizarre.
Anyway, I’ve concluded that my little French press pot makes a whole mess of good coffee, dare I say, better than most of what I’ve paid for in town. I mean, ain’t nothing like leaving little nibbles and bits of beans in your drink to let you know that what you’re drinking is the real thing. The oil is in it; it tastes like something that just came off a campfire, minus the ashes and lighter fluid.

I give you the top 5 coffee of Waco, TX:

5) Panera Bread Co.–not the highest quality, but unlimited refills. Therein lies its ability to scale into the top 5.

4) Texas Tea and Coffee–technically, it’s in McGregor, TX. Thus, it gets bumped down the list. That, and I’ve only had it once or twice. But on the whole, not a bad little drink.

3) Cafe Cappucino–little breakfast place that has yet to allow me to see the bottom of my cup. Seriously. I don’t think it has one, or if it does, it must contain the secrets of the universe. Hence, they never let me see the bottom of it.

2) World Cup Cafe–started by Mission Waco about a year ago, four blocks from the house. When I’m staring at an abandoned building out their front window, nothing comforts my soul more than a cup of their mud.

1) Olive Branch Cafe–my short-lived and ill-fated foray into the world of food service doesn’t deter me from saying that, yes, they do in fact have the best coffee you can buy in town. Walk in, grab a pastry, and sit with a good cup for an hour or so. It’s the same stuff as another place in town, but unlike the other place, this place knows that burned coffee does not equal good coffee.

Once upon a time, I went to the UK for a summer. No, I don’t have a single picture, because that was my reason for going: to take pictures for an unnamed missions agency who still owes me a ton of photographs. That aside.

I love the Brit culture for their music, for their moody weather, for their blanket honesty in the more rural parts, and for their frothy beverages. I do not, however, love them for what they do to their coffee.

For two months, I struggled to find a single cup of coffee worth peeing into, and failed miserably.
**

It had been three days into the sojourn, and I was jonesing for a cup of coffee. I mean, I was willing to sell my travelling companions for a summer’s supply of beans and a grinder. I’d strain it through chicken wire and drink it out of my shoe, but I was DYING for a cup of something resembling coffee. And then, on my first shopping trip in Ireland, I came across…instant coffee.

Any port in a storm.

As fate would have it, water still boils in the UK, and spoons still stir, and ten minutes after getting back to the hostel, I had myself my first steaming cup of coffee. Friends, it was some of the most grotesque stuff I’d ever put in my mouth. Nescafe, despite what the cool kids tell you, really is ridiculous. It was then and there that I resolved to never put past these lips anything that I didn’t know for sure was a bean at one time in its existence. If you have to work that hard to make a thing drinkable, give it up and go with intraveneous drugs.

One side benefit to this trip: an undying affection for hot tea. Tonight, I had a venti almond concoction courtesy of my friend Celina, the newest employee at the Barnes and Noble. Quite tasty, if I do say so myself. So, thank you, British Isles, for never realizing that coffee is a delicacy to be enjoyed, and leaving the good stuff to your compatriots across the way. Viva la revolucion!

If anyone out there is dying to get my a Christmas present, I can’t think of a better one.

Apart from maybe some plane tickets. But I won’t ask for those.
**

Drinking coffee and listening to music are independent obsessions. One need not be present in order for the other to happen. But it’s kinda nice when they collide. Case in point–the last three trips I’ve made up to Kansas City, some of my favorite times have been not necessarily raiding the local Half-Price Books, but sitting on Kevin and LT’s couch, listening to an old piece of vinyl and enjoying the morning with a mug full of black coffee. And here’s the part I like best:

Kevin doesn’t really drink coffee much anymore. But he makes it anyway. He makes it because he knows I like it, and because it’s been part of the fabric of our conversations for years now. Two months ago, we got together across three states with coffee in hand and chatted, for no other reason than it just felt natural that way.

I’m getting misty.
**
In college, we would occasionally hit the Waffle House, and as a disclaimer, I have to blame the Waffle House for my modern love of Journey. It was either that or Garth Brooks on the jukebox. It was coffee, conversation, and whatever we could scrape together by way of music.

When I am able to put the two together without a third party, i.e. listen to music and drink coffee without writing a paper, doing laundry, etc., it’s as if time has poached a little section of the eschaton and parked it in Waco for me. It’s unproductive; it’s reflective; I can’t think of a more excellent way to spend an hour. I’m a day out of being for the semester, and am having the sensation that I did when finishing the marathon: the impulse to sprint with all my heart, and break through a wall. I’ve been saying for a month that the first thing I’ll do when finishing is to spend an entire day in bed, but I really think I’ll just put on this album, kick up my feet, and drink a full pot.

Maybe with company. Maybe alone. I’ve got this friend who’s leaving Waco for good on Tuesday, and I think I know one more memory I’d like to have before she goes, and I think it involves the holy binity of coffee and tunes.

Upon moving to college, I decided that it was time to acquire my first real-time addiction. I’d been a swimmer in college, and still had a sense of physical fitness, so smoking was out. I’d never had a thing to drink at 18, and didn’t think it was ever appropriate to touch the fruits of the hop, so drinking was a no-go. However, coffee was both legal and, according to some studies, good for the liver, so coffee it was.

I began slowly, a cup in the morning, no cream. Upon meeting Kevin, that went quickly to a few cups a day, and most nights. A Wal-Mart mug designed for 40 oz. of juice became my new best friend, holding a pot at a time. Kevin and his roommate and myself would drain a full pot over the course of an evening. I could drink five cups and go straight to bed.

Once I left the mug in their room, only to find it a month later, the mug having grown a gelatinous substance which to this day, I have yet to identify. All I know is that it jumped out, stained the carpet, and never completely came out.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when your tolerance is blazing hot, when you can drink black coffee until midnight and then get a full night’s sleep. Last night, I drank a pot of tea until 10 p.m., and conked out an hour later. It’s all a matter of resistance, I suppose, being able to handle more than your body is born to do. Very little do I carry forth from college, except the love of legal stimulants.

As Kevin suggested, a new series: my life in coffee.
***

Contrary to what the mug by my desk in the computer lab might tell you, or what the coffee pot on my desk at home,…or my collection of dirty mugs in the sink in the grad lounge…..or at home….

Come to think of it, let me start this again.

I am a coffee addict. Reformed, but still in love with the ground-up fruits of the coffee-bean loins. Look anywhere in my life, and you will see the remnants of this addiction, this full-on smotherfest with coffee. I’m a coffee snob; even when exhausted, there’s no excuse for Folgers. There’s no part about waking up to Folgers that’s appealing, apart from the part where it leads me to the first morning session at the throne of grace.

It starts with my parents, David and Kathy. David is the type to drink coffee from morning to night. There is always a pot brewing at his office, which for a man who a) is a morning person and needs to work sharply into the late afternoon and b) runs the company, is a necessity. I remember going into his office at 4 p.m. after school and seeing a full mug of black on his desk. Kathy’s goes easy on the stuff. Not a morning person, she takes her coffee with sugar and cream to get moving, but beyond that feels none of the dark pull that haunts my dad and myself. I am my father’s son, in more and more ways as I get older.

They both grew up coffee fiends, and were glad to pass it on to me when the time came, which wasn’t fully until college. So now,when I go to Shreveport, coffee centers my home rituals. I’ll still get up earlier than I should to sit on the foot of their bed and have the first morning cup there. The front lawn chairs wait for me and a porcelain cup of goodness. Whenever I drink coffee, it pours into me the feeling of something old and deep, something which connects me from whatever far flung part of life I may be to where it all began.

You can get the boy out of the South, but not vice versa.