My Home Town—A Reminiscence, Chapter Sixty-Eight

A collection of short essays on my recollections of growing up in the Sierra foothills in the 1950s.

Recollections of My First Cup of Freshly-Ground Coffee

I still remember it well! It was the summer of 1961, and I was in Yosemite Valley visiting a friend, Phil, who was hanging out for a couple of months pursuing his newly found interest in rock-climbing. When Phil took an interest in something, he always jumped into it with both feet, and this was no exception. A gifted storyteller, his re-counting of the rock-climbing adventures of the likes of Royal Robbins and similarly-renowned climbers—all people he idolized at the time—held my rapt attention and gave occasion for my imagination to soar.

We had gone to one of the valley’s few eating establishments—I can’t recall which—that morning for a cup of coffee. We were sitting on the outside patio, the rays of the morning sun filtering down softly through the trees, the fresh smell of conifer branches in the air and the sound of mountain jays squawking high above us. Even though I had grown up not far from the Valley, back then I had seldom gone there, so everything about the place had the feeling of newness and excitement to it.

Our waitress brought us two coffees in fancy-looking cups resting atop matching saucers. The pungent smell of freshly-ground coffee beans rose up lazily from the dark brew as if it was from some exotic far-away land. My only prior experience with coffee-drinking at that point in my life had been drinking the “cowboy” coffee my father used to brew each morning in his antiquated coffee pot. Every day at first light he would pour scoops of canned, pre-ground Folgers coffee into the coffee pot, boiling the mixture until he decided it was done.

My parents also had a coffee percolator, but its use was reserved for special occasions such as family gatherings on holidays. Neither of these methods delivered results remotely similar to the wonderful blend that now sat enticingly before me, beckoning me to delve deeper into its rich and exotic depths.

That first sip was absolute perfection!

I’ve heard it said of junkies that their subsequent trips are always an attempt to re-capture that overpowering feeling they experienced the first time they used. After that first cup, I felt appreciation for the meaning behind the claim. The allure of that first cup of fresh-ground brew was so enjoyable, the taste so compellingly wonderful, that I’ve searched and longed ever since, cup after cup, for that experience to repeat itself.

However, perfection is, by definition, already something as faultless as it could possibly be. Doomed as it was from the beginning, my pursuit was a fool’s errand at best. That first cup must always remain the pinnacle of perfection, the highest of the heights attainable by us plain mortals, consigned as we are to our little existences while, like ripples on eternity’s shores, we wend our way through endless cycles of dissolution and renewal.

All the more reason we should find contentment with our small miracles, grateful for the opportunity to have them and happy in the knowledge that our existence on this plane affords us such opportunities at all.

To Be Continued: