Coffee: “America’s Necessary Drink”

According to the National Coffee Association’s Spring 2024 coffee trend report, U.S. coffee consumption is at an all-time high, with 67% of the population consuming it in some form. Within the Library of Congress’ three building campus on Capitol Hill alone, there are four distinct places one can pick up a cup of coffee (LemLem’s Coffee Shop, located in the tunnels, Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, and the LOC Cafeteria in the Madison Building). Whether purchasing a specialty coffee on the go or opting for a single-cup or full pot brew at home, Americans are clearly wild about coffee. It’s not just the adults enjoying coffee. In an interview in the American Folklife Center’s South-Central Georgia Folklife Project collection (AFC 1982/010), Janie “Ma” Nelson described a typical Sunday morning breakfast (timestamp 27:02):

“Salt mackerel was for breakfast. That was Sunday morning. It’s scrambled eggs, you know, to go with it. You’d have salt mackerel, eggs, and hoecake, and plenty of coffee. That was the one time that if a child liked coffee, in our house, we were allowed to drink coffee. Just Sunday morning, with our fish. That was a special permission. But of course you had more milk in it than you had coffee, but still we thought we had coffee.”

Janie Nelson’s description of the Sunday morning coffee of her childhood reminds me of the “coffee regular” that Carl Fleischhauer wrote about in his field notes from the Rhode Island Folklife Project:

“The third item that was new to me was ‘coffee regular,’ meaning coffee with cream. Usually the amount of cream is considerable. When I ordered ‘coffee regular,’ the waitress would often ask ‘with sugar?’”

AFC’s coffee subject file includes a January 27, 1977 article from the Washington Post titled “Coffee With a Down-Home Touch.” The title is a bit misleading, however, as the article covers cheaper alternatives to coffee for those strapped for cash:

“In the 1930s, a brew known as ‘depression coffee’ or ‘Hoover coffee’ surfaced. It calls for one pound of barley, one-fourth pound of chickory, and one-half pound of corn. The ingredients are mixed and roasted in an oven until well browned, then ground and brewed as coffee.”

The other alternative, referred to by the contributing public as “po’ folks coffee” reads as follows:

“Hull and mash up a hatful of chinkapins (a wild nut) and roast them along with a double handful of wheat or barley. Then pound up a handful of parched corn and add some honey or molasses for sweetening. Put all the ingredients in a pot with some clear branch water and boil to taste. Strain through your teeth.”

 

Of course, all these alternatives lack the caffeine that most coffee drinkers crave. It was this caffeine that the Pan American Coffee Bureau, “representing seven good neighbor coffee-growing nations,” touted as imperative to the war effort. In December 1941, the Pan American Coffee Bureau sponsored a radio broadcast of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech to the American public. A brief advertisement bookended the speech:

“On this, the Sunday of Christmas week, and the third Sunday of armed conflict, Mrs. Roosevelt has a message so important we shall take time to say only these few words from our sponsors. They are words quoted from a recent Navy Department memorandum, and they read as follows: It is a known fact that coffee plays an important part in the morale among the personnel of the Navy. In total war, high morale is needed not only by our armed forces, but by every civilian as well. Coffee gives the extra energy, the steadier nerves, which are so much a part of the kind of morale we all must have. Coffee, more than ever before, is the Americas’ necessary drink.”

“To all the families who are lucky enough to have sons back on furlough from the services for Christmas, and to all those thoughtful folks for inviting boys from neighboring posts for Christmas dinner, we have one suggestion to make: Be sure you serve plenty of coffee, for the average boy in the Army and the Navy, drinks just about four cups a day. They know coffee gives them the extra energy and the steady nerves their military work demands. It can do the same for you. It will do the same for you.”

While the focus of the advertisement is more on coffee as a convenient delivery system for caffeine, it also touches on the communal aspect of coffee – that of providing an opportunity for people and communities to come together. As alluded to in the “words from our sponsor” section, coffee – and those who served it – played a tremendously important part in the war effort. The Veterans History Project, which “collects, preserves and makes accessible the firsthand recollections of U.S. military veterans” houses several collections of interviews, photographs and memoirs from women who volunteered with the American Red Cross Clubmobiles, mobile cafes which handed out free coffee and donuts to soldiers stationed overseas.

Although the women operating the clubmobiles and rest stations (referred to as “Donut Dollies”) were considered civilians, their work often put them in dangerous situations, as explained by Margaret Fleming in both her memoirs and a letter to Tom Brokaw. While stationed with the 28^th Division in Luxembourg, fighting picked up between American and German forces and Fleming’s rest station was placed under alert:

“Lt. Col. Benjamin J. Trapani, who had just been placed in command of the rest area, told me that he planned to send me back to Bastogne. However, word was received that the roads leading out of Clervaux were under fire so that idea was abandoned, at least temporarily.

After a few hours the shelling stopped and I guess we hoped that somehow the attack had ‘blown over.’ At least, that’s what I hoped. I reopened the Red Cross club, although many of the men were being quickly assigned other duties than ‘resting.’ I placed a big, brave sign in the window to the effect, ‘Of course we’re open!’ The men who came in kidded me about earning a combat infantry badge the hard way. But that afternoon the shelling began again and became progressively worse.”

Fleming was later instructed to remove her 28^th Division patch but keep the Red Cross insignia on her uniform in the hopes that, if she were captured, her civilian status might save her. Over the next few weeks, Fleming and others made their way from the heavily shelled region to Charleville, France. Following the ordeal, Major General Normal D. Cota recommended that Fleming be awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service. Since she was a civilian, the citation was issued by President Truman. The citation reads:

“Miss Margaret Henry, American Red Cross, rendered meritorious service with Clubmobile Group F, 28^th Infantry Division Rest Center, Clervoux, Luxembourg, from 17 November to 25 December 1944. Despite heavy enemy shelling on the town, she steadfastly remained and continued to dispense coffee and doughnuts to the hard-pressed men. Her display of courage in the face of the violent German Ardennes Offensive materially furthered the morale of the American Combat Soldiers she served.”

Stories like these show that it isn’t just the taste or jolt of caffeine that makes coffee such an enduring part of our daily routine…it’s also the morale-building nature of sitting down for a cup of joe with your friends and co-workers. The communal aspect of coffee culture is evident throughout AFC’s collections, whether it be the “coffee klatch” social hour captured in photographs from the Paradise Valley Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1991/021);

the factory-wide coffee breaks  at Watson Machine International, a machine tool manufacturing company documented in the Working in Paterson Project Collection (AFC 1995/028);

or the ramp supper coffee service

and early morning cups of joe at the Back Porch Restaurant, as photographed for the Coal River Folklife Project (AFC 1999/008).

Coffeehouses have long served as community centers where people gathered to talk about the news of the day, play games, and listen to music. This role continues to this day. In 2014, the American Folklife Center sponsored a forum, Coffeehouses: Folk Music, Culture & Counterculture, where performers, historians and documentarians discussed the coffeehouse’s impact on the American folk music scene.

One of the coffeehouses discussed in the forum – Caffè Lena – is the focus of two distinct AFC archival collections: the Caffè Lena collection, 1960-2013 (AFC 2009/035) and the Saratoga Springs History Museum collection of Caffè Lena materials (AFC 2009/034). I recently had the opportunity to sift through hand-written recipe lists from the Caffe Lena collection. In addition to professionally printed (and laminated) menus listing the available drinks, as well as neatly hand-written original copies of the recipes in question, I stumbled upon this absolute gem of a find:

This series of three coffee-stained sheets of loose paper appears to have been the recipe list used by Caffè Lena’s baristas. I remembered using similar cheat sheets back in my university days, slinging coffee at the neighborhood coffee shop across from the campus. Ours were laminated for reasons that the copies in the Caffe Lena collection make abundantly obvious.

Reading through the recipes in the collection, one drink jumped out to me: Frosted Coffee Hawaii. The recipe seems simple:

• 2 full cups strong cold coffee

• 1 cup chilled pineapple juice

• 1 pint soft coffee ice cream

Combine ingredients and blend thoroughly with electric mixer. Garnish with pineapple slices.

I was simultaneously intrigued and horrified, mostly because I couldn’t see coffee and pineapple juice going too well together. One of the things I learned early on as a barista was that adding many fruit-based syrups (particularly raspberry and orange) to steamed milk resulted in curdled milk – not something one typically wants in their raspberry mocha. The presence of ice cream alongside the pineapple juice made me wary of the same thing happening. But who was I to question the tried-and-true recipe of a popular coffeehouse?

Recipe in hand, I set about picking up the ingredients at the grocery store. My sister and brother-in-law happened to be visiting at the time, which provided me with a slightly wider test audience for my attempt. All three ingredients went into the blender, and we crossed our fingers for a tasty result.

It did not go well. In fact, it was almost universally hated. My brother-in-law was the only one to take more than one sip. Although he had the same “what have I done” knee-jerk reaction the rest of us did upon first taste, he admitted that the taste grew on him the more he drank it. He did, however, clarify that it is not something he would ever intentionally order again.

The experience made me wonder how popular the original drink was. The drink does not appear on Caffè Lena’s current menu, but there is no way of knowing how long it remained on offer, or when it was removed from the list. If you patronized Caffè Lena back in the day and remember seeing “Frosted Coffee Hawaii” on the menu, I’d love to hear from you. Did you or someone you knew ever order it? What were your thoughts?

Further Reading

Check out the following coffee-related posts on the Folklife Today blog:

• Coffeehouses: Folk Music, Culture and Counterculture – guest post by Nancy Groce
• Community Collections Grant: Puerto Rican Coffee Traditions with Russell Oliver – Michelle Stefano

Want more coffee posts? Visit these entries from other Library of Congress blogs:

• Celebrating International Coffee Day: For the Love of Coffee – guest blog post by Jacquelyn Deppe, from In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress
• “Cool Off With Coffee”: Promoting Iced Coffee in Mid-Century America – guest post by Kelly Bennett, from Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

For more on Caffè Lena, visit the Library of Congress in person to view the following:

• Caffè Lena collection, 1960-2013 – available through the American Folklife Center
• Saratoga Springs History Museum collection of Caffè Lena materials – available through the American Folklife Center
• Caffè Lena: inside America’s legendary folk music coffeehouse, edited by Jocelyn Arem in collaboration with Caffè Lena – available through the American Folklife Center and the Performing Arts Reading Room

Visit the Veterans History Project for more information on the American Red Cross volunteers who ran the Red Cross Clubmobiles, including:

• Mary Patricia O’Driscoll
• Margaret Fleming
• Katharine Louise Heuisler
• Ruth Alberta Batic

For more on the history of the American Red Cross Clubmobiles, visit the American Red Cross