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that some people have health problems and have to eat this way, and I sympathize with them, but people who have those problems don’t choose to have them. So why do perfectly healthy people deprive themselves of real coffee? They may as well order colored water, heated and laden with sugar and cream. It achieves the same effect as a flour tortilla, which, I think, resembles cardboard with freckles. Coffee without caffeine isn’t coffee. You may as well have tea.
    When I visit friends overnight, unless I know they are confirmed coffee people, my first stop is in the kitchen. I seek out their coffee maker (I’m not picky as to type) and then make sure that the color of the can is red—not green. If they have no red, I inquire about the distance to the nearest café and tell them I’ll be absent in the morning. “I have to have my coffee,” I say.
    I’ll put up with your cats, endure your children, and stand outside in the rain and smoke. But I’m damned if I’ll drink decaf and call it coffee.
    Coffee is addictive, of course. Caffeine is a drug. Drinking coffee is a vice, but it’s one of the more innocuous vices human beings share, which, I guess, is why I have trouble tolerating Meddlers who don’t approve of it. Switching totally to decaf might prevent some horrible thing from happening, but it somehow would negate the point of drinking coffee in the first place. People who drink decaf are cheating. They’re fooling themselves.
    I feel the same way about people who drink (and serve) instant coffee. Instant coffee should be outlawed for use except in cases of extreme emergency, such as being confronted with decaf. Instant coffee forbids the ritual of preparing the pot, of measuring the grounds, of pouring the water, of waiting carefully for the moment when it’s ready, of savoring the first fresh cup of the morning.
    Making a cup of instant coffee is too much like making tea. Drinking instant coffee is like believing politicians’ “sound bites” on TV. They’re handy, easy to digest, and rarely make a mess. But they rarely mean anything, either. Instant coffee is frequently lumpy—and bitter—as well. So are most politicians.
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    I don’t know much about the history of coffee. I do know that during the War Between the States, Union troops along the rivers of Northern Virginia would build tiny rafts and float coffee across the Potomac to their mortal enemies in exchange for Rebel tobacco. They understood the necessity of indulging such vices when faced with imminent death. I know that American soldiers in two world wars and Korea and Vietnam were provided with coffee as a “top priority” item from the Quartermaster Corps. Second only to arms and munitions, it was higher in priority than prophylactics and cigarettes; higher, even, than food. Armies may march on their stomachs, as the saying goes, but after they’ve hurried up and are waiting, they want their coffee. Without it, they might mutiny.
    I’m not well-educated in the science of coffee. To be honest, I’m not all that interested. A few years ago I read that the coffee we buy has as many ground up cockroaches in it as it does ground up beans. If that’s true, I don’t want to know it. I like it the way it is, and I don’t want anybody fussing with it.
    It’s enough for me that coffee is available. It’s served almost everywhere food and beverages are sold, and it can be bought in the smallest of groceries, the seediest of gas stations, the greasiest of greasy spoons. Sometimes that’s the best coffee around. Sometimes it’s the best because it’s the only coffee around. Many’s the night in my experience that the only coffee around was the best coffee.
    Almost anyone can make coffee, particularly in the new drip makers that have directions printed on the lid. It’s hard to foul up coffee, but every coffee drinker knows where the best cup can be found in any city, and there’s no greater compliment to pay anyone than to say,