Church basement coffee at Woolworth's

 

At one time Moline, IL, had two dime stores, Kresge's and Woolworth's, in the same block.  As the downtown retail area began to falter, many merchants moved to malls or just closed down altogether.  The newspaper I worked for was a prodigious consumer of coffee, so its employees were frequenters of places that sold coffee.  Woolworth's was a survivor of the business abandonment of the downtown area and it had a snack bar that sold coffee, so many a cup of coffee made it from the store into the editorial offices of the newspaper.  But there was a reason.   The cranky lady who ran the snack bar had a devotion to making special coffee, which was to make coffee that tasted as good as it smelled while brewing.   She said if they can make fine coffee in a church basement, they can make it in a five-and-dime store.  So she did.  And her recipe called for breaking eggs into the grounds, among other things she did to them.  Anyway, newspaper reporter's and editor's desks often sported Woolworth coffee cups on them.  They were an important part of publishing the news.

When I think back on those days, they always include the aroma of coffee.  As our outdoor editor insisted, we didn't have printer's ink in our veins.  We ran on Woolworth coffee.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

America is Donald Trump

As a soldier stationed in Germany just after it was permitted to be fully self-governing, I, along with my fellow soldiers, pondered the question of how the Holocaust happened.  We wondered how and why the people assented to it with little or no criticism.  At the time I was there,  however, the Germans were on their best behavior around the NATO troops, and displayed a strong disapproval of what the Nazis represented.  Some of our cadre who had served in Germany during and shortly after the war told us not to be fooled:  the fact was that a preponderance of the people were in full support of Hitler and his regime.  The Holocaust was not something forced on them;  it was what the nation was at the time. And that describes the circumstance of Donald Trump.  His major asset is his wealth and the power it has on people.  As a person, he has no merits of intellect or character.  He lies prodigiously.  He is a convicted felon. ...
Read more

You can't fix stupid. But you can elect it to the legislature.

Image
Logan Manhart - South Dakota State Representative ABERDEEN, SD (KELO.com) — A controversial Independence Day post by a South Dakota lawmaker is generating some political fireworks.  State Representative Logan Manhart posted a photo with a caption saying “It’s white boy summer and the boys are back in charge.”  Democratic House leaders call it harmful and divisive, and are demanding an apology.   ______________________________________________ This is not a matter of partisan politics. It's a matter of intellectual competence.  For any American in our day and age to make such a racially charged comment, as Mr. Manhart is quoted above, is not a matter of current politics, but a matter of some individual deficiencies in education, which might likely be attributed to the inherent mental ability to be educated. I served in the Army during a time of relative peace, stationed on a guided missile base in Germany, where we were ready to launch should the Soviets and ...
Read more

Too much boondocks

"Can you believe that South Dakota once had two  Democrats, Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson, in the U.S. Senate.  And a Democrat, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in the House of Representatives.  Now just saying the word Democrat  in the state could get you lynched."    The speaker of those words was a former college faculty member who once taught in South Dakota, but has moved on.  He was at a faculty convention chatting with former colleagues from South Dakota.  The politics of the state are a bit of a puzzle in that the state is totally red, so staunchly Republican that it seems like the Democratic Party has gone extinct as far as the state is concerned.   There is much conjecture about why the state became such a bastion of what now passes for conservatism.  My own observation comes from my role as the keeper of a donors list for the county Democratic Party and as a professor at a state university.  In those roles, I noted a that the stat...
Read more