Beanhead: My Life and Coffee

This is your brain.



This is your brain on coffee.

Any questions?

Actually, yes. Where can I get some more?

My earliest memories of coffee center around a large stainless-steel pot that my parents used when we lived in Wisconsin during the 1950s. It was a magical, mystical, ritual object, not to be trifled with and not for children. There was a right way and a wrong way to dispense Folger's into the huge, shining hemisphere that sat atop the shining pot, a correct method of stirring the grounds as the water did its alchemical work, yielding the special substance that only adults could drink. Mom drank it black, Dad took half-and-half.

I don’t think I paid that much attention to coffee for the next 12 years or so. It stunts your growth, you know. When I went away to college and started staying up late because nobody could tell me not to, I learned the rejuvenating, drug-like qualities of the dark elixir.

It became almost as hip and cool to drag oneself over to the cafeteria in McSweeney Hall next door to my dorm, Apple Hall (invoke biblical coming-of-age allusions, fall from grace, partaking of the Tree of Knowledge, etc., here) for an early morning cup of java as it was to stay up unreasonably and unproductively late reading or writing a paper in order to undergo the ritual cleansing of the mind, soul, and urinary tract that naturally goes with caffeine dependency.

Needless to say, I was quickly hooked, but it wasn’t entirely my fault. My Scandinavian ancestry made me genetically and culturally predisposed to drinking coffee, loving coffee, needing coffee. They call it a Norwegian blood transfusion, dontchaknow. Don't feel so good? Have some coffee.

It was only after I transferred to Michigan, however, and starting working at the Belltower Hotel that I became a full-fledged coffee addict. Park of my job as “porter” at the little campus-area flophouse across the street from Hill Auditorium was to vacuum the lobby every morning before the cheapskate guests came downstairs to complain about the TV not working and enjoy their complimentary coffee and chocolate donuts. Maureen, the English desk clerk, and I would help ourselves to a styrofoam cuff of Maxwell House and a chocolate donut or two, being careful to make sure the hotel guests, who could have paid twice as much to stay at the Campus Inn, got first dibs. I was well on my way to a life of dissipation on the mean streets of Ann Arbor.

Living in the Upper Peninsula, drinking coffee is a requirement. Even people who don't like coffee drink it because it's what people do in the UP. "Come on in, have a cup o' kah-fee." Most social interaction occurs either over coffee or over beer. Tea drinkers and wine snobs beware: to eschew coffee or beer is to marginalize yourself. Prepare to be called a sugarbeeter.

When I moved to Georgia in the mid-seventies, we milked our Jersey cow, Ms. Red, every morning and skimmed the cream for coffee and oatmeal. Ooh-la-la! If you want to know what good is, it's fresh cream in your coffee, just hours from the cow.

It wasn't until we moved to Chicago and Gven worked at the Heartland Cafe that I discovered exotic coffees. The Heartland served a Mexican coffee called Bustelo that was dark and strong and more complex than regular coffee. I had tasted Cuban coffee in Miami and Turkish coffee in Detroit, but I had no idea: so many coffees, so little time.

At Oberlin at that time, coffee was something to wash down a brownie at the student union snack bar. Since then a coffee renaissance has taken place, and lots of cafes have opened, so the next generation of students has more choices.

When we moved to North Carolina, coffee was usually the beverage after a movie at the Janus Theater. Our friend Richard, in the midst of already animated conversation, would ask for "just half a cup" every time the waitress came around, even after half a dozen refills of half a cup and an increasingly wired talk-fest. I think coffee was Richard's liquor, and he handled it well.

Moving back to Atlanta and becoming parents, coffee took on additional meaning and survival value. I used to order coffee and cocoa at the downtown Howard Johnson's near the old Atlanta Stadium and do some editing work in one of the bright orange booths. Once I saw Hank Aaron come in quietly and sit down. He eyed me warily as I identified myself as a fan going back to his years in Milwaukee, but he said nothing and went back to his meal.

Coffee was in vogue when we moved to Columbus in the mid-eighties, and hipster cafes were opening up all over town. During graduate school I became a denizen first of King Avenue, then Arabica, then Insomnia, then Stauff's. Each had its own distinctive vibe, subculture, and dress code - smoking, nonsmoking, bohemian, punk, or self-consciously intellectual. I got a lot of reading done on those nights, a little valuable ethnographic observation, and maybe a bit of posturing too.

During grad school, coffee took on a communal dimension. The Physical Club was founded on coffee and Buckeye Donuts across High Street from Ramseyer Hall after Dr. Rosen's philosophy class. That's another story entirely, except to recount that Coach Estes, Swami Bob, and I did what we could to emulate C.S. Peirce, William James, Justice Holmes, and Chauncy Wright's Metaphysical Club, and the coffee helped. Later on, Bob and I would deconstruct and reconstruct line by line several drafts of his dissertation under the influence of plenty of French roast and Heavy Cream (Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, circa 1969).

Our coffee place in Fairhope, Alabama, was the snow cone shack across the road from the beach with like a hundred flavors of ice to choose from - and the world's best chicory coffee in tiny paper cups. I guess that year was not entirely wasted.

I haven't become a regular at any particular cafe in recent years, unless you count the cafeteria downstairs, where I look forward to a short chat with Lynda as much as the Starbuck's in the company mug. Clintonville, like Oberlin before it, sprouted a dozen coffee shops about the time we moved out. Come to think of it, one of them stands on the ruins of our front yard, but the coffee doesn't taste so good where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Most of my coffee is drunk at home nowadays, which is why the holiday gift of a French-press coffee pot from Jessi Golly was so timely. It came with two pounds of neighborhood-roasted beans from a couple of spots I'd like to visit someday in Brooklyn, New York, and I've been enjoying it a lot.

My current favorite in Methodistville is Java Central on State Street, where the people are nonideological, the brew is tasty, and I've gotten some serious editing done on the brick sidewalk outside. And it will have to do until our ship comes in (fantasy) and Gven and I open Earthies' Bookstore/Cafe. But where? I say Halifax or Traverse City; she says Taos or Savannah. Let's have a cup of coffee and discuss it.