Caffeine

 

By Tom Poland

“Cocaine,” JJ Cale wrote it. Eric Clapton sung it. Clapton described the song as anti-cocaine and that seems to be the case, if you read between the lines. There’s another addictive drug out there. Another huge hit. Caffeine. JJ Cale should have written “Caffeine.” Allow me to edit his lyrics. “If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues, caffeine/When your day is done, and you want to run, caffeine.” Run is right. The world does not run on fossil fuels, solar, or nuclear. It runs on caffeine.

I’m addicted. Many of you are too. My addiction started as a boy. Mom and Dad enjoyed coffee and I began to drink it around the age of 10, with milk and sugar. Today I drink it with fat free milk. No sugar. Of all the necessities that make me tick, caffeine tops the list. Can’t do without it. Nor can others. That’s why no matter where I travel, back roads, small towns, cities, of course, I see coffee shops.

Forget Starbucks. I like the quaint, non-corporate shops. My hometown of Lincolnton, Georgia, has a beautiful coffeeshop. The Lincolnton Coffee Cottage on 121 Main Street is cozy with a handsome décor. It’d be my hangout if I lived there. Someday maybe.

I go back now to when snowbirds began flocking to the Sunshine state. Near a South Carolina town named Cordova you’ll find the Coffee Pot Diner. In its heyday it dispensed hot coffee to snowbirds driving down US 301. Its heyday? From around 1950 until 1979. I read that the diner is no longer operating but a peek inside seemed to say it was. Being Sunday it was closed. Closed forever? I’m not sure.

What drew me to the shop is a photo I saw from the golden years with a coffee pot on its roof. Now I have seen businesses promoting their operation by placing a car on a pole, a boat on a pole, a chicken on a pole, and now I add this large coffeepot to the register. It’s just like the old coffeepot Mom and Dad used. Metal, a percolator, with a glass knob atop its lid. It stands six feet high and weighs 250 pounds—that would hold a lot of Joe, Java, Mud, or whatever slang term you substitute for coffee.

I’ve tried chicory and all manner of brands, Starbucks too. I keep going back to Eight O’ Clock. A good friend who met the owners of a coffee plantation told me they said Choc Full o’ Nuts is the best coffee out there, 100 percent coffee. I’ll buy some and see.

No matter the brand, coffee is my drug. I start my day with it. No matter what makes for a bad day, coffee improves it. And is there anything like the aroma of freshly ground beans? Just a trace energizes you. Funny though, go back in time far enough and you’ll see that coffee was called the Devil’s Brew. All that nonsense goes back to the Middle East and its witches brew of what is good and what is evil. Perhaps that’s what inspired this passage. “He sipped his coffee. The face that lapped and shifted in the dark liquid in the cup seemed an omen of things to come.” ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

As for the coffee shop with the pot on top, abandoned for a while, it appears to be restored and I hope that it’s open again. I’ll visit it on a weekday and enjoy a cup of the Devil’s Brew. As JJ Cale might have written “If your day is gone, and you want to ride on, caffeine/Don’t forget this fact, you can’t get it back, caffeine.” Cale’s right, but you’ll feel a lot better.

 

Photos by Tom Poland.

Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.

Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net

Email him at [email protected]