Coffee Coffee Coffee Coffee Coffee

I.....love....COFFEE!!!

I go to bed at night looking forward to it in the morning. For the most part I drink it black, but occasionally I like a little cream in the afternoons or with desserts. My family is addicted to this amazing beverage as well. When I was in labor, they drank so much I thought they would all wind up with kidney stones. In lieu of my family's love for coffee my cousin, Bibba, wrote this story a few years ago about my mom and aunt and their quest for coffee on a drive back from Auburn. Enjoy.


What does it take to get a cup of coffee around here?”

All they wanted was a cup of hot coffee, a simple enough task in most parts of our Starbucks-laden world. But not in lower Alabama, a land without lattes, a vast region barren of baristas. With five more hours left on our journey from Auburn, AL, home to Greenville, MS, my aunt and my mother just couldn’t travel any farther without a warm cup of Joe. And they had already had two cups each: one from the hotel room coffee-maker (which didn’t count, they said, because it wasn’t “real” coffee, just that weak stuff in the pre-measured pouches) and one robust cup from the cafe in hotel lobby, which only lasted them as far as Montgomery.

From their excitement in reaching the next town, you would have thought my aunt’s mini van burned coffee and not gas and we’d been running on empty. We stopped at the nearest chicken ‘n biscuits joint, which had a surprisingly clean restroom, but no coffee. The lady behind the counter, however, did offer us some sweet tea.

We piled in the van again, me feeling slightly amused, my teenage brother more than slightly exasperated. We traveled down the road to the Wendy’s drive-through. Hallelujah, “coffee $.99” it read on the bottom of the menu. My aunt ordered “two small coffees,” but when she pulled up to the second window, the cashier was holding “two small Frosty's,” not “coffees.” Turns out they didn’t have any coffee brewed.

As we left the Wendy’s, things felt pretty desperate. It was a small town, and there was only one gas station left. Plus, my mom and my aunt were cranky without their coffee, and my brother and I were cranky because we had spent twenty minutes stopping with nothing to show for it. We pulled into the gas station, our last hope, and I was sent in to procure the goods. Once past the electric doors, I made a beeline for the coffee station. As I was pouring, I could tell the urn was low. Come on, just two cups, I said to myself. Draining to the dregs, I managed to eek out two only two thirds full--with opaque lids they’d never notice, as long as it was hot. I turned around to see a woman behind me who was also hoping for a cup. “That’s okay,” she told her husband, “I can do without.”

I knew two women who couldn’t and walked to the car

in triumph.