Black Coffee in a Steel Cup
I first used a steel cup in the Boy Scouts, packing it on my belt like a prospector. That was a conical cup and I miss it. I think I donated it to a coworker's son with much of my camping gear.
Fifteen years later, working at a call center, I had my cups stolen off my desk. In a huff I went out and bought another steel cup. This one is cylindrical and holds about twelve ounces. My cup became quite famous and nobody stole it.
You drink your coffee black out of a steel cup, because coffee with cream and sugar still tastes like it came out of a steel cup. There is something business-like about coffee from a steel cup, as hot as you can stand it. It is not coffee drunk for the fun of coffee. It is coffee because you need it.
A Civil War vet once wrote a book called "Coffee and Hardtack" about camp life with the Union army, and they drank their coffee the hard core way: burn beans in a skillet, beat them into dust with a rifle butt, then boil them in a pot of water. You scoop out a tin can's worth, leaving a third of the can empty to help it cool. That is the kind of coffee that helps you walk into rifle fire. Our modern way of life prevents us from having this kind of coffee, unless you have a garden or something where you can easily throw aside a potful of coffee grounds.
I am having a dollar store bag of coffee, brewed strong because I killed a bag, in my steel cup. When you drink very hot black coffee out of a steel cup, you are not going to savor the flavor difference between Somali and Nicaraguan beans. You are going to get caffeinated. It is the sort of coffee you refuse to small children. It must harm them somehow. They're not ready for this level of coffee. Sorry.
I had a writing assignment to do for a friend and I got up at 3 a.m. to do it, and had my coffee, and now I'm writing about coffee because what else is there to do? I miss these old mornings spent writing while under the influence of too much caffeine. In college I used to write A papers all night long and when I got them back I couldn't remember writing them. Now that was some good coffee.
Of course this coffee takes its toll, and bitter experience hath shewn that you can't stomach enough coffee to keep you going twenty-four hours. If you can get a couple liters of Mountain Dew, pour it between glasses rapidly to get the carbonation out, and that will hold you. Or, if you're really gonzo, like I was when I worked graveyard shift at a hotel, you can get four venti Americanos with an add shot apiece. That's twenty shots of expresso.
I should mention I had a heart attack at thirty-seven.
I'll stop with this pot of coffee. Maybe I'll have the last cup in a ceramic mug with half-and-half and sugar, like I was going to enjoy it. For now I have my steel mug and black coffee and my memories.