27 cents with tax

Each Wednesday, I feature an excerpt from my upcoming book, Coffee and Me. I'm publishing it on my 55th birthday, January 5, 2027, because it's good to have something to look forward to and a goal to pursue.

October is supposed to be fall. Pumpkin drinks, cool breezes, comforting mugs, and sipping coffee.

Except it was 102 degrees today.

Nothing about that felt fallish. I drank an iced Americano and didn't even make a second cup. That should tell you something.

The heat has been inconvenient, but our weekend came with an even bigger disruption. A leak in the upstairs unit made its way into our bathroom. That meant tearing into the walls, patching the leak, and running two giant machines all weekend.

Which meant we spent the weekend in a hotel.

I attempted to reframe it. The hotel was a cute, quirky Brazilian place, only a short walk from home. We could go back during the day, watch television, and hang out. We just couldn't use our bathroom.

"We could treat this like a getaway," I told my wife. "A little retreat."

I was trying.

The room had a coffee maker that brewed somewhat like a Keurig, except it used a little filter packet filled with coffee instead of a pod. I figured it out, brewed a cup into a nice teal ceramic mug, added some cream and a bit of sugar, and went outside.

There were comfortable chairs surrounded by colorful plants and flowers. I sat, read, journaled, and sipped my coffee.

It was pleasant. I still felt discombobulated, but coffee has a way of helping me reset in these moments. Our bathroom was still torn up. The machines were still running. But I had somewhere nice to sit and a warm mug in my hands.

The next morning, I did it again, this time with the navy blue mug.

We had run out of creamer, but I had planned ahead. During one of our trips home, I poured a little of our creamer into a water bottle and brought it back.

Improvisation. Sometimes that's what gets you through the morning.

Once again, I sat outside among the colors and flowers, sipping my first cup.

It was also the first Sunday of the month, when our close friends host a church service. My tradition is to have only one cup beforehand, saving room for the several cups I'll enjoy there.

That morning, another friend who couldn't attend asked if we could pick up the Starbucks coffee traveler she had ordered.

So off to Starbucks we went.

When I walked in, her name was on the board in the finished section, but the traveler wasn't on the counter. I went to the front register, where the employee appeared to be occupied with whipped cream. He didn't look up.

That hit a nerve.

I worked fast food in college. We always said, "Welcome to McDonald's," or at least, "Hello."

I grumbled to myself: Who does the customer service training at Starbucks? Are we so devoted to efficiency that we've filtered out the humanity?

And suddenly, I was back thirty years, a broke college student serving senior coffees at McDonald's.

Twenty-five cents. Twenty-seven with tax. Free refills.

The regulars came in every morning. They called me Pippen, or Pip, after Scottie Pippen of the Bulls.

The coffee was easy enough to make: open the packet, pour it into the filter, flip the switch, and wait for it to brew. We kept four pots going in the morning because the orders never stopped.

But we said hi.

Those regulars got their coffee, their refills, and a little conversation. I still remember them all these years later.

Back at Starbucks, the employee finally looked up. I asked about the traveler.

"Oh, it's almost done," he said, turning to show me the container underneath the coffee pot, still filling.

So there you go. The board said finished. The coffee had other plans.

It had been a weekend of adjusting: a hotel instead of home, a different coffee maker, creamer in a water bottle. Then an iced Americano on an October day that felt like summer.

I'm glad I made those little hotel mornings for myself. I'm also glad I remember the people who came in for their twenty-seven-cent coffees.

A comfortable chair, a familiar mug, somebody saying hello—those things can do a lot for a morning.

Even when October is 102 degrees.

Whose hello do you still remember?

Here, I made this. My gift to you, for taking the time to read.

Images are from my imagination, generated by AI. Writing is all me.