Opinion & Comment

Cracked cup brings back memories of days when hot coffee was 'supped'

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

A cracked cup rescued from my parents’ tractor shed decades ago has occupied dusty corners of cabinets at our houses across three Appalachian states. It has traveled thousands of miles with my family, not quite an heirloom but an object of interest to me because I thought it originated from my childhood.

I was not quite right, but not wholly wrong. The cup, which likely was a premium in a box of oatmeal or soap flakes in the 1940s, pre-dates my arrival by several years. I remembered the cup, however, because it had always seemed to be around. It had a distinctive flawed rim, as if someone had chipped a piece of ceramic from the edge and then filed the jagged break smooth.

I just couldn’t pin down the recollection of where I’d first seen the cup. When my wife and I performed the chore of spring cleaning and emptied cabinets to wash plates and knick-knacks, we always wondered what possessed us to keep the broken cup in the first place. It was decorated with black enamel paint and was truly ugly, probably not worth a nickel.

Why had we not thrown it away?

One day at a country café, a place where the cook slaps baseball-sized hunks of fresh ground chuck on the griddle for quarter-pound hamburgers and the pie is homemade, I watched in fascination as an old man prepared to drink his coffee. What piqued my interest was that the coffee was served in steaming mugs, but he also asked for a saucer.

He added cream and sugar to the mug and stirred vigorously. Then, he poured coffee out of the mug into the saucer, lifted it to his lips, and blew on it to cool.

Finally, he supped… not “sipped.” The old man supped loudly and long until the saucer was empty. He smacked his lips in satisfaction and filled the saucer again.

My own grandfather, Mack Brown, drank his tongue-scorching coffee in exactly the same manner. This memory connection brought back the image of him, sitting at the kitchen table before sun-up, his bald head gleaming under the single light bulb that illuminated the room. My grandmother poured strong coffee from a battered and blackened pot that always bubbled on the back of the stove.

Grandpa Mack received his morning’s first jolt of caffeine in a cheap cup painted in black enamel. He drank his coffee unadulterated, so he immediately poured the steaming liquid into a matching and equally ugly saucer, blew on the coffee, and supped with gusto.

Now, whether the cracked cup was the same one that Grandpa Mack poured his “supping” coffee from every morning for over 60 years of married life, I don’t know and couldn’t prove. I am certain my cup was part of a set collected by my maternal grandmother when she purchased a particular brand of cereal or soap from the peddler.

The peddler, in his green panel truck with red wheels, came by twice a week, trading grocery items and sundries for fresh eggs, chickens, garden produce, and butter. Most of my grandmother’s mismatched tableware came from premiums contained in bulk foods or housecleaning supplies.

I can imagine the patience required on her part to collect a single place setting. It probably took six months. I can now remember several cups and saucers in the pattern, but no plates or platters. There might have been a teapot, but I am not sure.

The old man, supping his coffee from a saucer at a rural café, brought it all back. This table etiquette, or lack thereof, was common in the Appalachian Region, and nobody thought the behavior was rude; but “supping” is all but gone today.

I’m glad my wife and I resisted the temptation to throw the ugly chipped cup away. I wish we had a matching saucer, but we cherish having something tangible from the domestic life of my grandparents, who married at age 13, filled an old clapboard farmhouse with 14 children, and supped their coffee at every meal.