Cheri and I are coffee bag buyers. We’d probably be best described as 40% snobby coffee people. I never buy coffee from Starbucks which runs into the hundreds of dollars a month to keep up with, and we don’t even buy the fancy whole bean coffee at the fancy little roast-their-own coffee selling place. On the other end, I’m not much for the 5 pound can of coffee from the grocery shelves, and neither do I really care much for the Keurig pods, which taste what I imagine boiled dirt would taste like in a coffee cup.
We do, however, buy the coffee at the grocer’s that comes in already ground one-pound bags, and we usually change up the kind we have every time we buy new coffee. Again, I’m not really a gambler, but, as they say, “You puts down your money, and you takes your chances” when it comes to which coffee we buy any given week. There are times when we just have to set a bag that we had just purchased to the side, almost to become “emergency coffee,” since it’s really bad, and some other times, we will buy a pound, and wish later that we had bought a case, since it tastes so good. If you are going to drink coffee in this world, it should be both tasty and economical, or you are just better off doing what Cheri does most every night – drink boiling hot water. I went grocery shopping earlier this week, and lo and behold, coffee was on the list. I perused the selections, deciding between the $3.50/lb. stuff that I was sure would taste like what they put in the Keurig pods, and the $14.99/lb. stuff that, while perhaps tasty, really was something that might clot up in your throat. Since it was March, I picked a mid-range bag of Tim Horton’s ground bag coffee, and hoped for the best. As I set up the coffee for Wednesday morning, I opened the bag for the first time, and I found myself suddenly transported back 55 years in the past to a sweeter and more delicious time. You see, Mom and Dad, for as long as I could remember, drank Maxwell House Coffee. In the can, with that distinctive blue color. It never went in the fridge, never went in the vacuum-sealed container. It sat on the counter with its plastic lid, right next to the coffee maker. One of the great privileges of being a child who was old enough to work a can opener was to be handed a new, unopened can of Maxwell House to be unsealed. You see, with the first punch of the opener blade into the top of the can, there was a sudden rush of the transfer of air between the vacuum packed can and the outside world. With that transfer came – I can still smell the aroma – brand new coffee smell. Now, at 9 years old, drinking coffee was the last thing on my agenda, but to smell that smell – ahhh. I would open the can the rest of the way, smelling the ever-decreasing aroma, until the can was fully opened and the world went back to normal. But for those few seconds, I had imprinted into my scent memory a wonderful, delicious and incredible smell. Back to Tim Horton. They seal those coffee bags pretty tight, with industrial strength glue applied to pretty thin and rippable metallic plastic. More than once, I have managed to open a bag and have it tear, not horizontally, but vertically down the middle of the bag. Great times. This time, however, as I pulled and pulled and pulled to open Tim Horton, it suddenly let go, and like in a movie, I was transported back to the past with a can opener in my hand. The aroma smelled exactly like the Maxwell House can. I nearly stuck my nose completely into the bag, just to sniff it. It was just great. A day maker, to be sure. Since then, I have thought about, and tried to compile a list of other “aromas of yesterday” have created wonderful and happy feelings. Of course, it’s a gimme to put Thanksgiving turkey, and probably the stuffing and the gravy and corn and whatever else near the top, since it never fails to please. That, along with barbequed chicken on the charcoal grill in the middle of summer – oh man, I’m getting hungry! There are other, some more subtle aroma memories. When we lived in Australia when I was a child, we would run across the road at recess to order our meat pies from the little store, and then run back at noon to get them – with two shillings, you could get the pie, and a bottle of sarsaparilla pop, and after eating it, run again back over, and get your deposit on the bottle, and buy threepence worth of candy. But the smell of that meat pie as you unwrapped the foil was a unmistakable blend of lard-fried crust and either beef or lamb, or both inside. Every time I think of it, I have to pause… Of course, equally Australian was on those cold days in the middle of July – their winter time, when Mom would fix a pot of hot tea, and pour us each a cup, to which we would pour lots of milk, and about 5 teaspoons full of sugar, and stir it until it made a slurry. That sweet, ever so faint tea smell is an aroma of yesterday. Again, a couple of easy ones would be certainly – and it happens today – the smell of freshly baked bread, moments out of the oven. Also, who would deny the over-buttered popcorn with salt sticking to every buttered kernel in the movie theater? I have a couple of others that are not so universal. Ever so often, Dad would sit down in his chair with a tin of sardines and a sleeve of saltine crackers. We would all line up like eager hungry birds, and he would take a sardine out, smash it on the cracker, shake a bunch of salt on it, and hand it over to the first in line, who then would eat it while racing to the back of the line to get in place for the next helping. I imagine Dad must have shunted off a couple for himself, but I still recall the rare taste of salty fish on a salty cracker with salt on it… The most obscure aroma, I think, came when we would visit Grannie and Grandad in Omaha in the summer, and, probably to get us out of the house, Mom would give us each a dime and send us down the hill to the little store. There, we would look around at all the candy available, but not kidding ourselves – we knew we were going to buy a McGraw’s Flat Taffy – a wonderful sweet treat that was about 2 inches wide, 10 inches long, wrapped in waxed paper that would require technique to strip off the candy. My favorite flavors out of probably 20 different kinds were either root beer, chocolate, or the best – banana. We considered it to be an incredible treasure for 10 cents, but I remember the aroma – the smell – of the supersweet, artificially flavored wonder that belonged just to me. It’s amazing that even our noses have memories – as do our ears, when we hear that special song, or our eyes, when we see that special place, or even that special person – even our hands have the ability to remember touching and feeling those wonderful parts of our past. Never underestimate the memory that rests within you. Take time to intentionally bring them out. It’s hard at first to open the door, since we usually pile so much of our everyday stuff in front of it, but once we are able to loosen the lock, we will find a true treasure chest of memories that flood – oh, I forgot Cheri’s perfume – Jontue – when we first met. I’ll talk with you later – I have some more remembering to do… Word for the day: serendipity. Most of us have heard this word many times before, and even used it. Pronounced sair-en-DIP-ih-tee, the word denotes something happening by chance, but it happens in a happy way. Sort of like “good luck,” or “good fortune,” it always carries the connotation of something good occurring. It actually is a fairly new word, arising in 1754 in a work by Horace Walpole, and English writer, who borrowed and adapted it from an old Persian tale called, “The Three Princes of Serendip.” They go on all sorts of adventures, and despite themselves, they end up with great fortune and a wonderful experience. “Serendip” under British rule, was Ceylon – what today is known as Sri Lanka. So – do you feel lucky? That’s Clint Eastwood’s famous movie quote. It’s not quite the same if he were to say, “So – you feel serendipitous?”
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AuthorAfter 43 years of ministry, Randy Cross lived his "fourth life" and shared about retirement, living boldly and intentionally in our world. To be sure, there was some North Dakota thrown in. Archives
March 2023
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