Postcard from a Phoenix Motel

A real ceramic coffee cup brought from home makes motels feel more like home and the generic coffee taste better, and on this five-day trip I brought The Cup That Never Healed, a green Syracuse China coffee cup stamped 19-D, signifying manufacture in the fourth quarter of 1990, one of a six-cup motley crew hand-harvested from the factory-store seconds bin. These six were the originals in my restaurant-china-coffee-cup array, a secret source of comfort and pleasure (I have a cup for every mood) to me and nobody else.

This had been "the playful cup." (The others were "the intellectual cup," an unusual one broken when the kitchen table collapsed from metal fatigue, and I never cease looking for a replica; the "cup d'honneur" used for guests because it was the only one with a matching saucer; the pink-striped "feminine cup," and so on, insanely, or poetically.) After an accident cracked this cup from its foot all the way up alongside the handle, filling it with hot liquids put the drinker at risk so I shelved it up high, hoping it would use its vacation time to heal. Because travel puts any ceramic cup at risk, I packed this one for what has to be its last hurrah, conceding that if it hasn't healed itself by now it isn't going to. I planned to list here reasons why I kept this cup and kept my hope, but a sentimental attachment is made up of reasons that sound goofy to anyone else.

We have lived together long, this cup and I, and I can let it go only because I found on eBay one quite similar, although not a replica. Greetings from Phoenix. Get me outta here.

"There, There, Dearie"

It's 5 below 0 outside -- aggggh! Ireland left with me a fresh appreciation for hot drinks. Tea there, very necessary, arrived always at the table in an adorable personal-sized teapot (made of restaurant-type steel) and in the hotel room was a super-express electric hot-water pot. Unlike the rip-roaring rush of coffee, tea's caffeine boost is more like a pat on the hand: "There, there, dearie, don't carry on so."

I never had thoughts about tea or owned a teapot large or small, and back home explored again, with reason and delight, U.K. tea brands and the old-restaurant-ceramics frontier on eBay until I saw this personal teapot from Jackson China (Falls Creek, PA) stamped L7, July 1962, with a utilitarian shape and light cocoa-colored airbrush trim. Rinsing it and filling it (10-ounce capacity) with hot water and a teabag provides two cups, plus milk or cream, in my favorite 6-ounce restaurant-china cups, and the second hot cup is waiting right there and I don't have to get up for it. Most civilized.

Then I thought -- tea should be shared and I need another personal teapot for my company! It'll work for coffee too. From eBay I ordered another, same maker and shape, but with bright-green banding. It's on its way. The cup in this photo is from Shenango, date unknown. It's not a teacup but a coffee cup, but today I liked this shape's stability and thick heat-holding walls. Yesterday I took a walk. It was 9 degrees. I was back in 11 minutes.

Bone China

Mom collected shelves of fancy china teacups I don't want. They're nice enough, but I lead more of a "student" lifestyle and don't want useless things nor do I give a fig for decor. (When I say that I even roll my OWN eyes.) I couldn't understand why Mom filled her house with china and fragile figurines, realizing as I sat alone, after her death, in her junque-filled living room, that through these items she was showing us her soul: full of delicate, finely wrought and pretty things, much at odds with a personality (while we were growing up) comparable to a professional wrestler's, although she mellowed, as did I, after all we kids left home.

I eyed the one shelf holding smaller, demitasse cups. Those I do use. Correctly or not I drink espresso from them. I own four. "This is pretty," I said to my sister, holding up the most baroque, ridiculously designed, four-footed gilded cup, with a saucer to match; the items are stamped "JKW Bavaria." The designs in and on the cup and saucer are not hand-painted but screened, including the vignettes of an 18th-century male-female romance, when girls wore more clothes than guys. In one scene he plays a guitar while she holds out to him a rose. Far out.

My sister, the estate executor, said "You'd better take it then."

"Can I?"

My sister lifted the pieces from the shelf and firmly handed them to me, then rearranged the other cups so no telltale gap remained between them.

The  cup's thin china walls and feet mean that hot liquids in them cannot possibly stay warm for long. I decided to look it up. This is a "chocolate cup" from JKW Bavaria's "Love Story" series, available in yellow, white, red and pink as well as green. In tiny letters the pieces are stamped "Western Germany" which indicates manufacture after 1949.

Imagine the mind of the person who designed this, then imagine the minds that desired this item without ever wanting to use it, and there is something mindful of war and survival in that.

Simple Pleasures

"What would be fun?" I asked my shattered self, and then thought of stopping at the local bakery for  coffee and maybe a pecan roll, if they had one (these quickly sell out). I used to eat them weekly until they attached a label saying they are 670 calories apiece. So I now go a year between pecan rolls or until I can't stand the vicissitudes of life any longer.

I got there and they had one, and I also ordered a plain black coffee to be put in a "real cup," a.k.a. a ceramic cup. I once asked at a city coffeehouse to have coffee in a "real cup," and the waitress beneath her pink hair and piercings said, "We have imaginary cups too."

On every trip far from home I take a time-out to have a pastry and coffee of the local kind, and have very fond memories of a chocolate croissant and espresso at a sidewalk table in Quebec, and a light coffee with a custard pastry in a gilded coffee house in Portugal, and sitting with a coffee and pastry is always fun, a happy moment, even a peak experience, perhaps the most concentrated experience of contentment in the short time we live on this Titanic called the Earth. Come on, said my spirit. Hey, skinny one; hey, Cheerful Tearful. Enjoy it. Enjoy life.

Better Together

I'm drawn to thick strong old-fashioned restaurant china coffee cups because, I realized, my dad played cards with his friends in our church basement while I sat in his lap, and they drank from such cups, always with saucers. When a friend thought to give me for Christmas a saucer that matched one of my treasured Buffalo China cups shown on this blog, I was thrilled. Aren't they a handsome pair? Bake little butter cookies and it's no longer just a cup of coffee, it's a whole civilization restored. I am so grateful. Who knows what stories this cup and saucer tell each other after half a century of wandering from Buffalo, New York, finally to meet in a cabin in Missouri where someone appreciates them.

The cup is undated, or its date stamp has worn away. The saucer is dated 12-64. So they are not mates but perhaps siblings. The red airbrush trim is classic.

Buffalo China's factory, opened in 1901 and closed in 2013, is still standing, and china is still there stacked up ready to go (see photo) and on the production line, unfinished, so it closed in a hurry. There are more photos of the factory here.

No One Has Ever Been Happier

November 1 was a gorgeous 80-degree day, spent working, tooling around in the car on errands all midday and eating two mozzarella sticks and a tangerine for lunch, then getting minor foot surgery I have needed for seven years (no, it does not hurt) and unflinchingly paying cash I had saved for that: so satisfying. Then at 4:00 p.m. at home serving myself my real lunch out on the Divine Porch, watching beautiful birds occupying the golden atmosphere, and after that, dessert. I had bought Golden Delicious apples because a recipe specified them. Compared with the cloying sweetness of Red Delicious apples, these are wonderfully tasty.

Apple slices with my day's cup of coffee, espresso, in the tiny hand-painted cup I brought home from Portugal after touring a ceramics factory in Coimbra and watching eight artists wielding pinpoint-tipped brushes to build amazing, entirely original designs on cups, plates, pitchers, and so on.

Sitting in the rocker, taking in the sunlight and scenery, breathing the delicious scent of coffee in this unique and pretty souvenir of a wonderful country, I thought that no one has ever been as happy as I was at that moment.

Cheerful

Carefully I select from my collection of 13 old restaurantware coffee cups the one which suits my mood or the one I think will alter it for the better. These are the three with airbrushing. The blue and red are from Buffalo China, the goldish from Shenango. Buffalo, Syracuse, and Iroquois were three major manufacturers in upstate New York and I started with six cups from Syracuse China while living in Syracuse 30 years ago in an apartment measuring 10 feet by 12 feet, not caring because I'd shared a flat for three years and wanted my own life. At the Syracuse China (now out of business) factory outlet with its bins of seconds, cups and saucers, I selected six different cups at just a few cents each; four survive intact, and I keep one that's cracked, hoping it will heal.

None of these were among them. Over the years I have eBayed, seeking mostly to replace the one Syracuse cup with a Greek key design around its edge, broken when a table collapsed, never found, but now and then falling in love with a cup for no good reason; I did not grow up in or near a diner, nor eat at any. My passion for them must be prehistoric. They are with me every day and never leave. They do not booty call. They do not come home at 3 o'clock in the morning and lie to me about where they were.

Fine china I never had, don't have, and don't want. It doesn't suit my knockabout lifestyle or keep the coffee warm--the whole point of thick-walled, thick-lipped restaurant china. The blue cup has a matching saucer, one of two cups in my collection that does.

Love and Commitment

Come over, I'll make you coffee

I've never loved like this before. I am head over heels because this red Nespresso machine makes the best coffee I have ever had or ever will have, with its little coffee pods, not at all like Keurig pods; oh no. They aren't interchangeable. One must buy Nespresso pods from the Nespresso company (and recycle them). This thing makes me love life.

I have terrible memories of Demetrius's 12-cup coffeemaker and how he drank all 12 cups every day and became a roaring monster, unable to sleep. I had been contented with my pour-over.

Each Nespresso pod costs 70 to 75 cents and each of the 17 different varieties is sold in packs of 10, each type with with jewel-colored, brushed-aluminum pods and romantic names. The pitch-dark Turkish coffee called "Khazar" is my favorite, with "Roma" a close second; on Sundays I like the "Ciocolatino" espresso with its chocolate whiff. The "Linizio Lungo" in the blue pod is my daily, with "Indriya" and "Dulsao" for variety; the green pod is a limited-edition Rwanda coffee.The pods are recyclable.

This machine costs about $120 but you can pay fortunes for stainless-steel ones that will froth your milk and connect with your phone. I know an owner who keeps a Nespresso machine in his bedroom and connects with it upon awakening.

I have one caffeinated cup per day, taking great care to time it when I most need caffeine, and taking time out to sit and savor it, thinking happy thoughts. The nearest Starbuck's is 17 miles away.

On Having Things Nice

Live alone and you've got to have some items or rituals that quietly and secretly give you reliable pleasure. I like tea first thing in the morning, and I like coffee cups/teacups of thick old restaurant china to be the first things I handle and see. They are comforting and fortifying. (To me, "mugs" even sound barbaric.) While living in Syracuse, NY, I visited the factory store of Syracuse China Company and bought for .50 each eight random restaurant coffee cups from a "seconds" bin, and 20 years later, while the factory is no more, I still cherish the surviving five and the three replacements from eBay, such as the one above, known to be a pattern from 1967. It's in a random saucer because while a restaurant coffee cup is comfort, a cup with a saucer is life.

It's not about "having nice things." Things don't have to be fragile or expensive to be nice. Don't deny yourself just because you aren't wealthy or because no one sees or cares but you. If you've always wanted a jackknife with a fishing scene carved on its handle, or a thermos with the Scotch-plaid pattern on it, a rosemary bush, a gingham tablecloth, if it will gladden you every time you see it, get it. Love it. Any love is good love.