Coffee RIP

Lamenting Three Krups of Coffee

You might think my birding and bird writing is fueled by passion. Wrong. It’s coffee. Three cups of strong black coffee.

Therefore I am heartbroken to announce that my coffee maker died peacefully in its sleep last night. After several desperate attempts to brew coffee in the morning, my beloved Krups was declared dead at 8:15 a.m. It was thirteen years old.

A true workhorse, my coffee maker brewed an estimated 13,500 cups over the course of its life. Even in its dotage, after suffering a crack to its heating element (a coffee maker’s shattered pelvis), its timer never failed to engage at the preprogrammed hour. A hot cup of coffee awaited me every morning, rain or shine.

My coffee maker and I didn’t always see eye to eye. I frequently lamented the haste of its automatic shut off feature (a miserly 30 minutes) and too many cups of lukewarm coffee. And if it approved of anything I ever did, it never said as much. A stoic appliance, whatever affection it felt for me was held fast behind a cold, stainless steel façade.

But sometimes love is better measured in actions than words. Coffee maker was there through thick and thin, brewing Joe without complaint, its only demand the occasional descaling. Without its loyal service, I would never have had the pep to track down this Canvasback.

Or the focus to find this Veery.

Or the quickness to capture this Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

My coffee maker came to me in the fall of 2011, a gift from my mother following the death of its predecessor. Mom found the slightly battered floor model of a Krups on the clearance table of the Williams Sonoma store at Summit Mall in Akron, Ohio. It was priced at forty dollars. Eleven dollars later, she walked away with the brand new(ish) coffee maker.

My coffee maker is survived by me, my mother, and my wife’s month-old tea kettle, with whom it shared a counter and a short-lived but boiling-hot romance.

A brief service was held graveside.

In lieu of flowers, please subscribe to my Substack.

That’s all for now.

Until next time, hug your coffee maker ☕☕☕

nwb