Hey folks, welcome back to the Garage Corner.
I went out to grab a cup of coffee on Tuesday morning while waiting for the auto parts store to open. I walked into a new place down the block, and the menu looked like a chemistry textbook. I asked the girl behind the counter for a medium black coffee. Just hot water running through roasted beans. Simple.
She looked at me like I had just asked her to calculate the flight path to Mars.
She asked if I wanted a light roast from Ethiopia with "floral notes," or a dark roast from Colombia with "hints of tobacco and toasted marshmallow." Then she asked if I wanted oat milk, almond milk, soy milk, or macadamia nut milk. Folks, if it doesn't come out of a cow, it’s not milk. It’s juice. You are drinking nut juice.
Whatever happened to just a regular cup of joe?
We have over-complicated the simplest morning ritual on the planet. Coffee used to be fuel. It was the bitter, piping-hot liquid that shook the cobwebs out of your brain at five in the morning so you could go drive a truck or operate a lathe. It tasted like coffee. You put it in a heavy ceramic mug or a stained thermos, and you drank it because it got the job done.
Now, coffee is a personality trait. People walk around carrying these giant, sixty-ounce pastel-colored cups with built-in straws, filled with two shots of espresso, four pumps of Madagascar vanilla syrup, whipped cream, and a caramel drizzle. That’s not a morning pick-me-up. That’s a liquid birthday cake. You aren’t waking up; you’re entering a diabetic coma before nine o'clock.
And the cost! They handed me a bill for seven dollars and fifty cents. For a beverage! For seven-fifty in 1990, you could get a full breakfast, a tank of regular unleaded, and a copy of the morning paper.
We’ve been convinced that if something isn’t artisanal, fair-trade, and hand-poured by a guy wearing a leather apron and a handlebar mustache, it’s garbage. But the fancy packaging doesn't make the caffeine work any faster. It just makes your wallet lighter.
Our grandfathers won a world war on coffee that was boiled in a tin pot over an open campfire. It probably had a few pine needles and some dirt floating in it, and they didn't complain about the "acidic profile." They drank it, got up, and built the modern world.
So, here’s my advice: skip the boutique coffee shop with the acoustic guitar music playing in the background. Find a local diner with a waitress named Barb who calls you "honey" and keeps a glass pot of regular drip moving every five minutes. Put a little sugar in it if you must, but leave the macadamia nuts in the shell where they belong.
Get your fuel, skip the fluff, and get to work.
Until next time, keep your coffee black and your life simple.
