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Food For Thought: Caffeinated Commemorations

Nancy Leson
Mac's Turkish coffee outfit

Nancy Leson asked, "When did you start drinking coffee?"  

In an instant (forgive the expression), I remembered elementary school mornings when my mom, Chesterfield ash trembling dangerously over my glass, dripped some drops of her barely brown Maxwell House into my milk.

Nancy tells a similar story about visits to her grandmother and the "coffee milk" she drank there.  Her husband has a more cosmopolitan coffee back story. 

Mac's father became an enthusiastic patron of Turkish coffee houses during a visit there during Mac's childhood.  The Turkish coffee set he brought home is now retired, but Mac still likes his morning coffee à la Turque.

"Every morning he makes a Turkish style coffee in an ibrik.  He mixes two teaspoons of Cafe Du Monde and now he's cutting it with a Lebanese coffee called Cafe Najjar, adds two sugar cubes and some boiling water.  I love Turkish coffee but I don't love what he does with this."

Nancy thinks Mac enjoys the ritual of coffee making as much as the coffee itself.  Me, not so much.  I just want a straight shot with a minimum of fuss.  I've been an espresso drinker since my teens.  I picked up the habit in New York's Little Italy where I'd sip one with a cannoli while channeling  my inner wiseguy.

Nancy's son Nate is a coffee lover, too. "He's a real Seattle kid. He lives to hang-out in cafés."  Nancy prefers to drink her coffee at home.  Me too.  I haven't spent time in cafés since bongos went out.  But if one opens up around here that hosts the ghosts of Samuel Johnson and his Turk's Head crowd I'll be there.

Anyone got a good coffee reminiscence?

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." – Paul Erdos

Dick Stein joined KNKX in January 1992. He retired in 2020 after three decades on air. During his storied radio career, he hosted the morning jazz show, co-hosted and produced "Food for Thought" with Nancy Leson and wrote and directed the Jimmy Jazzoid live radio musical comedies and 100 episodes of Jazz Kitchen.