A little nostalgia with your coffee

I decided to extract this blue coffee pot from a closet and give it a try again. It’s been a long time. I brew coffee by multiple methods but have avoided percolation primarily because it takes too long and, with a gas stovetop, too much energy. But the other day, Bastille Day, I thought the camp percolator might produce flavorful coffee to go with a French-inspired breakfast of crepes. It did more than that. It produced an aroma far more robust and alluring than coffee from other methods. It filled the kitchen with a fragrance that reminded me of early-morning risings for deep-sea fishing with my father and brother, or for work with foundrymen when I was a teenager. As the percolator purred and gurgled, I’m pretty sure the next memory stop was a cool, damp summer morning at an in-law’s stone farmhouse in Brittany. And then the sweet fumes took me to long-ago Sunday evenings with aunts and uncles gathered around a cloth-covered table for coffee and cannoli. So, yeah, percolators are nostalgic, and there’s nothing wrong with a little nostalgia for breakfast. It’s a way of summoning absent friends and relatives to your kitchen — the men of your life sipping from white mugs, your godmother slipping a sugar cube in her cup while asking about your grades.