What did we know about coffee?  Little, other than it was one of the trilogy of distasteful adult substances—coffee, alcohol, and cigarettes—not meant for us kids.  Oh yes, and sex.  We sipped furtive cocktail dregs from glasses leftover from parties the night before, inhaled copious second hand smoke, and cleaned out the grounds from the coffee pot when doing dishes.  It wasn’t entirely clear what the attraction was, except that it was forbidden.

My mother was out on some errand, and Susan asked if she could have a cup of coffee.  That seemed important to her (we didn't understand the caffeine imperative yet), so my older sister and I, who had never actually made coffee, tried to rise to the occasion. 

Coffee was a morning ritual for my parents, which my mother surely always prepared. Our brand was Maxwell House, allegedly good to the last drop, in a huge round can.  Our drip pot was a tower of aluminum, the pitcher at the bottom, the metal brew basket with perforations for the ground coffee in the middle, and the container where the boiling water was added at the top.  The whistling metal tea kettle was separate.  I’m not sure that I even heard the word “espresso” until many years later.

I suppose that in the late 50’s and 60’s there existed a coffee house culture with beatniks, known to me mostly via Maynard G. Krebs on the “Dobie Gillis” sitcom; if East Lansing had such a place, I had no clue.  But I did have an aunt Susan who was at least beatnik-adjacent.  She was my mother’s youngest sister, 20 years younger than her but only 10 years older than me.  She was our favorite, full of laughs and easy to relate to.  She went to college and hung out with boys and challenged stereotypes.  Once when she was around 20, she passed through Michigan and briefly visited our house.

My mother was out on some errand, and Susan asked if she could have a cup of coffee.  That seemed important to her (we didn’t understand the caffeine imperative yet), so my older sister and I, who had never actually made coffee, tried to rise to the occasion.  I let my sister do the honors, digging out the big blue Maxell House can, scooping a random amount into the drip coffee pot, and setting the kettle to boil.  So far, so good.  Water added, brew accomplished, coffee cup of brownish water delivered to our aunt.

She took a sip and immediately spit it out, wild-eyed, crying out that something was wrong.  She thought she had been poisoned and rinsed her mouth out repeatedly.  What had we done!!!??

Distraught, my sister dutifully pulled down the can of Maxwell House and opened it for inspection.  Alas, it did not contain ground coffee.  Maybe not a total surprise in a household with a father who was a bit of a food adventurist, it turned out that those funny-looking brownish flakes hiding in the coffee can were actually a righteous cache of hot pepper flakes–the kind you would put on a pizza.  Or the kind that could be accidentally brewed into a searingly hot cup of “coffee”.