The Best Part of Waking Up

Waking up is not on the top of the list of things I like to do, but it does have its reward. I am sure that I am like many of you. I get up every morning, eventually wake up and get washed and dressed, and then I head to the coffee pot for a cup of that essential beverage. 

Several years ago, I was visiting my daughter in Los Angeles. My son-in-law, Benny, had just purchased a very slick espresso machine. His San Diego brother is a real espresso afficionado who prepares his morning cup with the care and finicky attention that we hope airplane mechanics take when they service the 737 we are about to board. Benny tried to match his brother with the new machine. It grinds the coffee beans, tamps them down in the portafilter, then brews the coffee, which pours into the frothed milk prepared by the machine at the same time. 

I had to admit that Benny’s espresso machine was impressive, and my morning LA cappuccino was fine, but wow the machine was expensive, real expensive. 

I returned home to Houston, and I started shopping for an espresso machine. I had a Bialetti espresso coffee pot, but I was after something more interesting and entertaining. And faster. I found a machine that was almost as good as the one my son-in-law bought, but I have to tamp the ground coffee by hand before brewing it. The machine has changed my life – well, maybe not that dramatic, but I do like to watch the dark coffee drip into a cup of frothed milk. I like the odor of the ground coffee. I like the taste that complements my muffin or bagel. Life is good.

What a privilege it is today to have coffee. It was not always so. Consider the fact that Julius Caesar had to start his day without a cup of coffee. Coffee originated centuries later around the 9th century in Ethiopia. The legend is that a goatherd named Kaldi noticed that when his goats nibbled red berries from a certain tree, they appeared to be full of energy and did not sleep at night. (Does a goatherd check to see if his creatures are sleeping?) He decided to try the berries himself and felt a burst of energy.

Kaldi told the abbot of a local monastery about his goats. The abbot had trouble staying awake during the lengthy evening prayers, and he made a drink out of the berries. The abbot apparently stayed awake and soon, drinking this potion became popular among other monks. No more snoozing during evening prayers. But note that centuries later, a cup of cappuccino was not a beverage of monks but named as its brown color was similar to the brown robes of the Italian Capuchin friars.

Let’s get back to the espresso machine. I admit that I have an electric percolator, an old aluminum stove-top percolator, various cone-shaped filter devices, a French press, and the Bialetti. All my life I have made coffee happily with one of these devices, but then I had to simply add cold milk (horrors) to the coffee or heat and sometimes froth the milk separately to add to the coffee. All of that takes time, as you can imagine. It’s enough to make one drink the coffee black.

I am not alone in wishing for a faster way to prepare my fix of caffeine. Coffee was clearly a popular drink in the Middle East and Europe by the 16th century. Coffee houses sprung up all over and were popular places to hang out for entertainment and gossip. But a workman on break did not have the time to wait for the laborious preparation of his cup. So, Luigi Bezzera invented a machine that could prepare a cup of coffee in 30 seconds, and his machine was perfected by Desiderio Pavoni and presented at the 1906 Milan World’s Fair. The rapidly brewed drink was a best-seller at the fair, and ever since, we have enjoyed caffè espresso. (Espresso – meaning “fast” in Italian.)

And I think we may all feel a bit patriotic drinking our morning coffee even if what we enjoy is not a Caffè Americano. After British Parliament levied a tax in 1773 on tea exported to the American colonies, the Bostonians protested by dumping tea from ships in the harbor in what we know as the Boston Tea Party. Since then, coffee has been our drink whether it’s black or a flat white or a latte or a cappuccino. So, the best part of waking up is actually our American salute.