Mukilteo Musings

About Coffee

I have to say I cringed at the news about Starbuck's opening in Paris--just like I cringed when I came upon a Starbuck's right next to Canterbury Cathedral in England. I like Starbuck's but I'm not sure I like spreading Seattle all over the world--it becomes not Seattle's anymore. I started drinking coffee as a kid--out of my Dad's thermos when we were camping or fishing and I was cold. He always put milk and sugar in it. In college I drank dorm coffee and instant in my room so I could study--by then I drank it black. One time in college, I visited this wealthy woman on her Montana ranch in the middle of nowhere and she brewed some coffee after grinding her own beans and served it in expensive delicate china cups; it was magnificent. A few years after that in 1979, we moved to Seattle and we weren't here long before we were told that people here grind their own beans. Well, I remembered that day at the ranch and we found a place that sold roasted coffee beans and grinders. It may have been the original Starbuck's--I do not remember because it was not that famous. I would never turn back--no more instant or Folgers for me. I have gone through a variety of coffee makers--including the kind that would grind and then brew all at once but I have always tried to recapture the euphoria of that day on the ranch. We now have settled upon a French Press and ironically, a thermos.

Eventually, Starbuck's had a couple more shops in downtown and when I worked downtown, I would treat myself to good coffee now and then instead of law firm rot gut. Not long after that, a Starbuck's opened near the University and I would drive in traffic 20 minutes just to buy good beans. They had the best beans and still do but now I can buy good beans from a variety of places within five minutes of my house. In downtown Seattle, there is a corner where you can actually spot six different Starbuck's and in Vancouver B.C., there are two across the street from one another. I never get the milkshake things they serve now at Starbuck's; only a double tall latte with skim milk now and then. But coffee is a Seattle thing spawned by our fog, mist and drizzle and Starbuck's does not belong in Paris.