Shortly after Bob and I married, we hauled our new coffee percolator, a wedding gift from my aunt and uncle, to a Sunday School waffle supper at one of the classmates’ four-room duplex. As newlyweds, we all were infatuated with our electrical appliances. That evening, it didn’t take us long to discover that when we plugged in all the coffee pots, all of the waffle irons and all of the electric skillets for frying bacon, we blew all of the fuses.
Since I was in charge of the coffee, my committee and I moved all the coffee pots to the bathroom and bedroom to use the plugs there. The rest of the cooks, fried all the bacon in the kitchen before they turned the waffle irons back on. The inconvenience didn’t really matter because the real purpose of the party was to enjoy the newly made friendships. And we did. Besides, we still talk about that gathering and the fun we created with one another as newlyweds.
This month, on the eve of our 49th anniversary, we discarded that old percolator even though it still worked. With the advent of the new drip coffee makers, we had stored our old percolator. However we pulled it out when we wanted to make more than one pot of coffee at a time.
When Bob was working on our house at the coast about ten years ago, he took the percolator with him so that he could make coffee. One morning, as he started to make a pot, the small glass top, where one could see the coffee perking, broke in half. He duct taped the two pieces together and it worked just fine for the next decade with the same stripe of duct tape.
After we completely moved to the coast and continued using the drip coffee maker, we retired the old percolator to our camper. In fact, we used it for years in several campers. At campgrounds, we perked a pot of coffee every morning and most days, we would take a cup of steaming hot coffee outside to drink. It’s amazing how the aroma of coffee invites other campers walking by to stop for a brief chat. After breakfast, we then we filled our thermos for the rest of the day. Even when we camped in a tent, we carried the percolator to use when we could get a site with water and electricity access. We now have a built in coffee maker in our camper and old faithful really didn’t have a place.
For several days, before we carried our old percolator to the dump, it sat on our porch table. Each time we looked at it, it prompted another memory of places we had been and dreams of places we want to go.
With reluctance, we trashed our old friend because we knew no place like Good Will or The Salvation Army would want a 49-year-old coffee pot with a duct-taped top. I was wistful actually tossing the old percolator because it had been so much a part of our lives for almost a half century.
In a Writer’s Digest article, author Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant quotes Tim Bete who wrote Bedtime Stories for Dogs. He says, “Time lets things percolate.” He’s actually talking to writers about letting ideas have time to brew in their heads before they sit at the computer.
And as our old coffee pot taught us over the years, time not only lets ideas and the coffee percolate...
It also prompts memories...
And stirs appreciation for how short life is...
Time is in the moment.
2007
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