My South: Following Tom Petty’s advice on coffee

Jilda and I had a minor crisis in our lives this past week. Our coffee maker died. It was a slow, tragic death. I should have seen it coming, but I neglected the tale-tale signs of tepid coffee and an unexplained leak. Then last Thursday, it spewed and gurgled one last time. That’s when the Watson household went into crisis mode.

My Army training kicked in. Situation analysis: Jilda will be awake soon, and if there is no coffee, there could be bloodshed. She is even-tempered 99 percent of the time, but those numbers drop dramatically on mornings when she hasn’t had caffeine.

I riffled through the back of our pantry for the old glass coffee press that we use when the power goes off. Blowing the dust off, I washed that baby off and fired up the kettle on the stove. Soon we had two steaming cups of java on the coffee table – crisis averted.

Then came the search for a new coffee maker. Most people would have gone to Walmart and bought a cheap coffee maker to solve the problem. But “we ain’t most people.”

Jilda said we have to get the right coffee maker. She’d just read about a journalist who interviewed the musician, Tom Petty. I Googled the story. It didn’t take long to realize that Petty was into coffee too. During the interview, Petty talked about his music and life on the road. But the conversation took a turn, and Petty talked about his love of coffee. When he was a young starving artist in Gainesville, Florida, he would go to a diner for coffee. This was when he couldn’t afford a piece of pie to go with his coffee. That experience of sitting for hours in that diner with his fingers around a hot cup of coffee was an experience that stayed with him throughout his life.

Later in Petty’s career, he could afford exotic coffee from anywhere on the planet and the best coffee maker ever made. He bought two Bunn Coffee Makers because he never wanted to wait for a fresh cup. We also thought it interesting that Petty’s choice of coffee was Maxwell House. After reading the article, I looked at Jilda and said, “We need a Bunn.”

Doing some research, we decided on a BX Velocity Brew 10-Cup Home Brewer. I used my mad-money that I made from writing this column and purchased one online.

Even though the UPS man brought the box late in the afternoon, we felt compelled to have a cup of coffee. Who needs to sleep?

I rarely read instructions, but I wanted to make sure the Bunn was set up right. It took about 30 torturous minutes to complete all the steps.

Once we were satisfied, the coffee maker was ready to go, I meticulously measured the right amount of java for two mugs of coffee.

I closed my eyes. The aroma of coffee soon drifted from the kitchen. Through the years, we’ve belonged to expensive coffee clubs and tasted coffee from around the world. I’m not sure any of those coffees were better than our first cup from the new Bunn coffee maker. I’m glad we took Tom Petty’s advice.