Coffee flavored with everything

As I type this out I am drinking a pecan praline flavored coffee. I can't help wondering what me Pops and me Grandpa Joe and me Grandpaw Hutchins, avid coffee drinkers all, would think of such a thing.

My family's history with coffee has always been for it brewed strong and black. Honestly that still is my favorite way to drink it, even though that method is going by the wayside it seems. When I'm in a hipstery type coffee shop and ask for a large black coffee I get that look: it either means that they don't actually know how to  make it like that anymore or I'm from an alien world.

Maybe I am. Yet I do like certain flavored coffees. This pecan praline is good; the toasted hazelnut I have in the larder is very good. I love highlander grog with its taste of Scotland. On the road to Arizona last month I tried and adored a raspberry lava cake coffee, and was delighted that my increasingly fallible memory was still able to find the gas station and restaurant where I found it first while on my way back to the D. I may never find it again. But I will look sharp for it on my next journey out west.

Now autumn approaches and I look forward to, well, not all things pumpkin spice but certainly to pumpkin spice coffee. Then too, there's a shop called Frontier Town in Romeo, Michigan which brings in a holiday blend coffee every October, in anticipation of Christmas. Yes, we celebrate Christmas far too early. But that holiday blend with its touches of cinnamon and nutmeg and I swear a vague hint of apple is worth the consternation of other holiday excesses.

My respective grandfathers I think would turn their noses at such coffee travesties. Me Pops I believe would try some flavors while sticking more firmly than me to the traditional brew. And I will readily admit they are right: strong and black and without airs is the best coffee. I typically still take it that way.

I'll figuratively sneak out behind the barn for the occasional contraband flavor just the same.

Romeo in March?

Yesterday morning as I drove out the Van Dyke Freeway north of Detroit I found myself in familiar territory. So familiar in fact that as I neared the exit for Romeo, Michigan, my brain sent out the command, "Turn on your left turn signal". I ignored it.

About a quarter mile further along the road my brain again said, just a bit more insistently, "Turn on your turn signal". I kept moving.

Soon I was perilously near the exit. My brain enunciated very clearly, "Turn. On. Your. Left. Signal."

I drove past the Romeo exit. "You missed your turn!" my brain exclaimed.

No I didn't, Marty's brain. I wasn't going to Romeo. I was going to Imlay City about 25 miles beyond there to deliver two drain snakes and a cable. What gave my brain conniptions was that I am seldom that far north on the Van Dyke Freeway unless I'm going to the orchards around Romeo. For coming up on 40 years now, you understand, my family and I have went to Romeo in the fall for apples and pumpkins. My brain expected I was going there.

Why does it seem odd to be in familiar places at the wrong time? It did indeed feel weird to be near Romeo and not buying apples. In fact it felt odd to be there without the fall colors, seeing pumpkins all over the fields, and without taking the time to feed the goats behind what has become a regular stop when in the area, a neat little store called Frontier Town (whom I don't mind at all giving a plug; you should go there). It really seemed as though I should not have been near Romeo at all.

I suppose there's a psychological explanation for it. Ah well; explanations or not, I did have to stop at Frontier Town on the way back home to take in the aroma of its coffee, buy a couple pounds of it, and spend a few minutes trading tales with the proprietor. My brain felt better for it too.