Eight O'clock Coffee. I paused when I saw the name on the little pod of coffee I was about to put into our space age coffee maker. You know you've made a considerable number of trips around the sun when a routine erupts into a very random memory. Then you find yourself back in a time when we didn't have space age coffee makers and one had to wait on a percolator to quit bubbling before the coffee was ready.
I had a psychology professor who described our minds as filing cabinet drawers (ok, so I went to college back when people used paper and the filing cabinet industry flourished.) The files we use a lot-phone numbers, passwords, our address, the way home to that address, how to tie our shoes - are always at the front of the file drawer. The files seldom or never used - your locker combination in eighth grade, EVERYTHING you learned in algebra, the questions on your learner's permit test - get pushed to the back of the drawer. Also back there are very good things. Conversations, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, days spent on inner tubes and playing in creeks. This morning the Eight O'clock Coffee pod reached way back in the drawer and pulled out the file labeled "Thursdays in East Atlanta."
Mama didn't learn to drive 'til she was 40-something. So when I was a child and grocery store day arrived we had to take a long walk. We went up Fayetteville Road and took a right on Mary Dell Drive. We'd walk past East Atlanta High School and Peterson Elementary, all the way to the bus stop at the top of the hill. At the bus stop we got on the Gresham Limited and rode to East Atlanta. I remember those old buses having straight-shift transmissions. So depending on your driver, you might have a rough ride. And if it was damn hot outside, it was hotter in that bus. You could slide open the window and blow some hot air in on you if you liked. But the passenger next to you might put up a fuss about it if she'd just been to town to have her hair set.
Back to our destination. East Atlanta is in the city limits of Atlanta yet it behaves like a small town inside that large city (then and now.) Now they call it East Atlanta Village and it's a trendy, Bohemian little stretch of Flat Shoals Avenue. There's restaurants, coffee shops and funky stores of all kinds. But back then it was just the main street of our little town in the city and where we did our "trading." There was a Trust Company Bank on the corner of Glenwood and Flat Shoals. There was also a bakery, a drug store, a movie theater, a barber shop and an A&P grocery store down that little 1/2 mile of street. On those Thursdays, our trips on the Gresham Limited had two primary destinations: The Trust Company Bank to cash a check so that we could buy groceries and then up the street to the A&P to buy them.
When we arrived at the A&P I was already in pretty good shape, thanks to a lollipop courtesy of the teller at the bank. Mama would lift me up and put me in the seat of the buggy and we'd head for the Coke machine. Soon I was armed with a lollipop in one hand and a cold "Co-Cola" in the other (glass bottle of course.) This was the 1960-something equivalent of letting a young 'un watch "Sponge Bob" on your iSomething so that you could shop in peace.
Back to Eight O'clock Coffee. The reason that little pod of coffee took me back to simpler days was that Eight O'clock coffee grinder that sat in the middle of that old store. To a small child it seemed as big as a Volkswagen. The coffee was sold whole bean and there weren't 90 brands from which to choose. I remember Eight O'clock and Luzianne (which had chicory root in it and could walk on its own.) Since coffee grinders were not household items in those days one had to pour your choice of coffee in the store's grinder and grind it there. I'm firmly convinced the beautiful smell coming out of that huge coffee grinder led to the coffee addiction I carry with me still today. I started drinking it when I was around 5 or 6 years old. Mama used to put an ice cube in it so it wouldn't burn my tongue. Daddy fussed that it would stunt my growth. Well thank God I drank it...
Without fail we would see someone we knew while shopping. We always ran into Anne Bullock as Thursday was also her grocery day. Other than being patrons of the same grocery store we also went to church with Anne. This was at the Methodist church that sat at the corner of Moreland and Metropolitan and was named after Martha Brown (I never really knew who Martha Brown was...but there hung a very unflattering portrait of her in a hallway at the church.) Every Sunday Anne sat on the second row of the left side of the sanctuary and we sat right behind her on the third row. I can remember thinking she must be the richest woman in East Atlanta 'cause of the way she dressed. And she was always dressed as nicely at the A&P on Thursdays as she was at church on Sunday. On the day of my baptism she was wearing a hat full of flowers. Before they could get me up there to sprinkle my head, I'm told that I picked a few of the flowers out of that hat. Later in life I had the opportunity as a young adult to visit with Anne. Though much older, it was apparent that she still never left her house without looking good enough to take to Chinatown. I reminded her of the stories I'd heard about me ruining her hat the day of my baptism. She had no recollection of it but got a good laugh nonetheless. She couldn't remember the hat incident but she did share something with me that had managed to stay with her into what were, by then, the latter days of her life. "I can remember seeing you sitting in that buggy at the A&P, a lollipop in one hand and a Co-Cola in the other. I used to think 'we should all be as content as that child is right now.' "
Contentment. It seems to come naturally in your early years but has to be hunted down later in life. I think that old A&P store is some type of hipster art studio now. Reckon it might cause a stir if a 50-something-year-old man came and sat in the middle of the place, a Coke in one hand and a lollipop in the other and asked what they did with the coffee grinder?
