Black Coffee

                              MAKE MINE BLACK
                                 (and leave out the chunks)

I think most everyone who begins drinking coffee started with using cream or milk and sugar. Actually it originally was lots of cream or milk and sugar and the rest coffee. We wanted to be grownups, but needed the additives to stomach the coffee. I used the milk and sugar for the early part of my life and the early months onboard ship. A problem arose with the milk and sugar, when we took on jarheads (Marines) along with their Amtracs during training exercises. These Marines would come aboard, sometimes out of the cold and pounce upon our coffee machine. It was about a 55 cup capacity unit and once they hit it, it was depleted quickly. We could always make more coffee as the ingredients were normally located close by. However the milk and sugar getting depleted was another problem. These items were stored elsewhere, somewhere in the galley or cooler which were not always open to the public. Aside from giving out of cream and sugar, these Marines were pretty sloppy around the coffee machine. They would fill their canteen utensil with coffee, add milk and stir, add sugar and stir and add more milk and stir, and add more sugar and stir, until they had it filled to the rim. Of course when they attempted to leave, they were spilling coffee along the way. Too many times I came up from watch in the AUX engine room for coffee and found the milk all gone, and the sugar ….. what was left of it caked with spilled milk and coffee from the spoons or whatever they used at the time they were getting their coffee. From the looks of the place at times it looked like they used an electric mixer without a top. Anyway I started, because of this sloppiness, drinking coffee because of the depleted milk and scrounging what was left of the sugar, if any, and trying to stay away from the clods of creame-sugar-coffee mixture. Finally I got to the point of just drinking coffee straight black, and after a while couldn’t stand coffee with cream or sugar. It’s been that way ever since ……. Thanks Jarheads!!                                                                                        (ccb)