“Mr. Herbert Hoover says that now’s the time to buy,
so let’s have another cup of coffee and let’s have another piece of pie.”  -Irving Berlin

As is usually the case, I approached this month’s blog with a trip to Goodwill, in search of a theme. Before arriving at my “eureka!” moment, I discarded several potential ideas…

My first abandoned topic was “what to do with fifty unsold Frozen t-shirts. After “burn them”. “bury them”, and “make prisoners wear them”, all I had left was “donate them to Goodwill”, which had already been done. Maybe fifty slightly-behind-the-times pre-teen girls will storm Goodwill and buy them all. Let’s hope so.

No good. All the jokes were used up years ago.

The open, unused graduation napkins were just depressing. I guess Jimmy didn’t pull out that D-minus in Chemistry, after all.

Too easy.

I’m saving “Teacher Gifts That Go Straight To Goodwill” for December.

Finally, I wandered through housewares and noticed several familiar, but dated items. Egad! I was gazing on the touchstones of almost every morning of my life between kindergarten and high school. There was a virtual 1970s/80s kitchen set at my fingertips! I knew then that this month we would be having afternoon coffee in the era of my youth. Groovy!

Awakened bright and early by our new, high-tech SPARTUS alarm clock, my lovely bride and I hurried to prepare coffee for our morning guests. With a braying blat reminiscent of a faulty fire alarm in a down-at-heel La Quinta, our SPARTUS made sure that we, along with the rest of the block, were awake and ready for some 70s-licious coffee!

Ah! The good old Farberware Superfast percolator! I spent many a happy Saturday morning watching cartoons while ours perked away, filling the house with the aroma of freshly-brewed goodness while I eagerly awaited its bounty. (I was allowed to drink coffee as a child, which probably explains a lot.)

Chances are, if you’re over about 45 or so, you grew up with a variety of ceramics around your house, most likely in either avocado green or burnt orange. Not only were ceramic items popular in stores, attending ceramic-making parties was in vogue, and everything from the coffee beans to the cornmeal could be found in a ceramic container. Some items, such as the creamer and mushroom pitcher, appear to be commercially made.

The coffee bean holder…is a toss-up.

…and the pumpkin-thing cookie jar/teapot was clearly made by someone’s Aunt Mildred after one too many Singapore Slings, but that’s part of the charm, and makes for a great story at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and funerals.

After coffee and cookies, I was feeling a bit full, so I went for a walk, complete with, you guessed it, my Walkman at my side, perhaps even listening to “Stayin’ Alive”. Yes, I am that cool.

So there you have it. Want to have coffee in a past time? Check out the housewares at Goodwill. For less than $15, we enjoyed an entire morning of nostalgia. (And yes, the coffee pot still works!)

Cheers!
FLT3