A toast to the evil bean

Cream? Sugar?

Cuppa Joe, java, battery acid, bean juice, morning mud, jitter juice. No matter the name, caffeine is a mainstay of our lives in whatever form we take it and sooner or later most of us find our way to Temple Caffeine.

Sept. 29 is National Coffee Day. With the designation of that holiday, a confession is in order.

I’ve never had a cup of coffee; at least not one that stayed with me for very long.

I’ve sampled two cups, both after a social bender in high school years with some fledgling drinking buddies and fellow Alameda High School senior Rich Blanchett. He schooled us novices that if we were going to drink, we needed lessons in the late night rituals of post-drinking etiquette: Greasy French fries, burritos from Taco Bell’s late night menu, stops at 7-11 for cheap smokes and the sobering process initiated by several cups of coffee. For me, those first two cups lasted about 10 minutes and ended up on the blacktop of the Village Inn parking lot at near Wadsworth and Alameda.

After the klatch with Rich (We won’t even talk about why we engaged in an adult drinking occupation on juvenile wages) I could never look at coffee again.

Times change.

Coffee is to a journalist as rocket fuel is to a Saturn booster and each day my keyboard companions decry the need for caffeine. Caffeine is the universal language that reaches across the world but when you grow up in a neighborhood populated with believers in a religion that abstains from the evil bean, that’s where my connection with coffee begins.

In the 1950s in a small town called Bellevue, there was a short street that once housed ranch-style homes painted white or green, all with a riot of fuscia-colored rhododendron bushes with blooms the size of dinner plates.

Everyone cared for their gardens, painted their houses and attended one of the many local churches.

By the end of the decade, only two families remained on the street after other neighbors sensed the change in the wind and moved away as commercial developments encroached on the lane. Our white house had three people, their green-colored house had six, a family devoted to the tenets of their religion; if I wanted to hang out with my best friend, I had to become a dry-land believer.

They lived and breathed their religion; they attended church and blessed their meals. The family unit was indivisible and toiled like worker bees. They canned the fruits from their extensive gardens, sewed all their owns clothes, when not working, kids played on a homemade sturdy but dangerous swing set and my friend's dad built her a five-story Barbie doll house complete with working elevator.

I went to primary classes at the church and had a good time. I learned how to knit, crochet, square dance, bake bread, and had all the names of the books of the New Testament inscribed on my brain, was taught the finer points on how a sewer treatment facility works and that caffeine will keep you out of heaven. It was fun.

My mother and my best friend’s mother held a kaffee-klatch a few times a week. At my friend’s house, my mother was served non-caffeinated and tasteless Postum in heavy ceramic mugs. When my friend’s mother, who had arms like ham hocks and only wore volumnuous tent dresses stomped her way across the street to our house, Mom pulled out the Folger’s and fine Bavarian china and never a work was spoken about the merits of the Word of Wisdom.

“When you’re older,” Mom told me, “you’ll drink coffee just like everyone else.”

Well, Ma, I’m in my mid-50s and I still don’t drink coffee.

At 27 I found colas. Shasta, RC, Coke, Pepsi. I had never tasted cola before then. My parents thought they were right up there with right rock n’ roll music and mini skirts and would lead civilization on the road to ruin. Regardless, I developed a taste for the nasty burn as it sears its way down your throat, causing for the briefest of moments a loss of breath relieved by a grateful gasp of air. Salvation.

As a veteran cola-lover, I fought in the cola wars with the same zealous abandon as missionaries in their first month of scouring the landslide looking for their first watery conquest.

I found my religion in cola: Coke or Pepsi.

Pepsi.

In any form, Americans love their caffeine, and I’m one of them. Another confession: I’ve never tasted a latte, cappuccino, or any of those fancy-shmancy caffeine concoctions. I won’t spend money on frou-frou drinks served by baristas who speak a language known only to those with a Starbucks card. I still don’t know what “no whip” means.

Pepsi, please.

In the mood to celebrate caffeine? Along with National Coffee Day there’s National Pepsi Day on March 19, National Have a Coke Day is May 8; July 10 is Real Thing Day, a date to coincide with the launch of Classic Coke that spawned the flavor-debate debacle of the last century.

None of those holidays would have been celebrated on our street back then.

The last few houses on that short little street are now gone just as foam on latte and with them the memories from those days. The dead hamsters buried in the back yard, the raspberry bushes plundered when the neighbors weren’t home and the friendly little war between those who love caffeine and those who don’t. The street is now sleek with dotted with glassy condominiums, showy shops, flower stores and fine restaurants … and coffee shops.

Starbucks is right on the corner.

Happy National Coffee Day.