Time, Coffee and Auntie Jo 

In warm weather, when my brothers and I played in the street in front of our house, I would sometimes see Auntie Jo sitting out on the second floor porch, her hair freshly washed, as she parted it in the middle and combed out the long strands before she pinned it up into the bun she always wore.  Her hair was so very long, mostly gray, but some of it very white.

We lived in the downstairs apartment, and Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo moved into the upstairs apartment when I was about eight or nine, I think. Before that, they had lived two doors down. They were brother and sister, not husband and wife, and they were our landlords; or, at least Tony was.

Uncle Tony was loud and balding, pushy, demanding, sometimes generous, but with something about him that sometimes made me nervous. But Auntie Jo was like coming home to someone quiet, loving, toe the mark or she’d have a word with you, but, in the end, she could make everything all right. Her voice was soothing, her manner gentle, and, when we were sick, she made a delicious mint tea for us children that could cure any tummy ache.

We weren’t related to Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo.

My parents met Tony because he’d been a regular customer at the donut shop where they both worked before they got married. It was 1950, and they were looking to rent an apartment for after the wedding, but apartments were hard to come by in the tight housing market after the end of the Second World War. They had to live with Dad’s parents for a while, but Uncle Tony at last came through with an apartment for them.

Today, maybe we’d call the street a cul de sac, trying to make it sound fancy, but this was the 1950s. A few months before I was born, my parents moved into a lovely two bedroom apartment in a house with a front porch, a back porch, a front garden, and a big back yard with a towering oak; on a dead end street with a gas station on one corner, a car dealer on the other, a warehouse across from us, and a gun club down the street.

That house was where I lived for my first eleven years, through some very good times, and some very bad times. Auntie Jo was a part of the good times.

Some of my happiest memories with her involve coffee.

Auntie Jo would often invite us, the whole family, to come for coffee. There was a ritual to her preparations that I absolutely loved. She had her own coffee grinder which consisted of a wooden box with a metal grinding mechanism in the upper area, a handle for turning the grinder on top, and a draw in the lower section which caught the ground coffee. Auntie Joe would pour in dark, shiny coffee beans, turn the handle again and again, and open the drawer to spoon the ground coffee into the basket of her percolator. The smell was heavenly.

There was something of egg shell and a dash of salt thrown into the water, and the coffee was set on the stove to perk. I’d sit at the kitchen table, waiting, waiting, waiting for that coffee to perk, and at last, it would begin – a loud, insistent rhythm as the coffee splashed up into the clear glass top of the lid – even better than the Maxwell House commercials. Then, when it perked enough, Auntie Jo would take the pot off the heat and set it to rest for a few minutes before pouring.

We kids all had cookies with the grown-ups, and the Italian cookies we were offered were quite nice. I liked the ones that had cherries and the S-shaped ones the best. My brothers would have glasses of milk too. Because I was the oldest child, I was allowed to have coffee. Auntie Jo would fill my cup half way with coffee, the rest of the way with milk. I would put my two teaspoons of sugar into my cup myself. Then I’d stir carefully, licking my spoon before resting it on my saucer. The grown-ups would talk, and I would sit and listen, sipping my coffee, never interrupting, but certainly offering my opinion if asked.

When at last I had finished my cup of coffee, there would often be a tiny bit of coffee ground in the bottom of my cup. And for some reason, that made the whole experience more special.

Sweet Auntie Jo.

We moved away shortly after my eleventh birthday, and I remember my family visiting her one time; but only once.

Times changed.

I've tried various ways of making coffee – good coffee, bad coffee, delicious coffee, but there is no way so satisfying to my soul as with a percolator.

I can’t imagine Auntie Jo using a K-cup.

I can’t imagine her coffee without a trifling bit of grounds.

My hair’s gray now, though not long like Auntie Jo's.

I'm not sure the coffee smell can ever again be so heavenly as it was then, but maybe it’s time to get myself an old-fashioned wooden box coffee grinder.

It's worth a try.