hot ditch water

This morning we are waking up in our now usual Tallahassee motel, Staybridge Suites out on I10 east, I think at the same exit with the antique car museum. We toured the car museum two or three years ago and loved it, at least I loved it and took pictures of some of my many favorite cars there, including several that were ordinary cars on Harrison Avenue when I was a boy. Not that I’m an antique. Well, I remember when Pop, my grandfather, was 75 and I thought he was surely the oldest being under the sun. 

It’s a new motel and pretty nice, rooms have kitchens, which was handy the time we were here for nearly a week. And coffee makers, of course. Everything has always been perfect, except that our coffee maker doesn’t work this morning. Linda managed to squeeze a cup of atrociously thick, black mud out of it, and we’ve mixed it into hot water from the tap at the kitchen sink. From Navy days, I drink mine black, and this cup does not remind me of the perfect coffee I had in ships at sea, both in the officers’ wardroom and in the crew’s mess. It brings to mind another time, in Columbus, Ohio. I was the command duty officer one Sunday morning and overnight to Monday morning. I arrived timely to relieve the Saturday CDO. The turnover relief took five or ten minutes, then as soon after he left, I went to the coffee urn to draw a cup. I’ve reported here on this before, sometime in the five years I’ve been writing this blog. It was the practice there for the civil servant who took care of the duty room, which the admiral called “the wardroom,” to empty and clean the coffee urn first thing every morning, and brew another urn of coffee. Monday through  Friday, that is. This coffee had been brewed early Friday morning, kept steaming hot, and now it was Sunday morning. It’s the only coffee in memory that was worse than the cup I just now enjoyed as my first cup Saturday morning at Staybridge Suites motel. But you get to choose: caffeine or headache, so I drank it. Mud and water. 

Time to shower now and meet TJCC for our customary treat of breakfast at Village Inn. This time I’m intending to have two eggs over medium and one blueberry pancake. And black coffee.

Thos+