The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Visitors ease pain of lost coffeemaker




Our Keurig coffeemaker has died and I am grieving big time.

Loretta has washed it out with two gallons of white vinegar, twice, and followed all the instructions that came with the book that tells about cleaning it and all that but I knew, weeks ago, that cleaning was like dressing a corpse. Points East

I had heard the sickly cough and the death rattle weeks before our coffeemaker gave up the ghost. And I must say that she hung in there to the end. I had come to call our coffeemaker

“Susie Q” and I had developed a fond relationship with her because all I had to do was pop in a K-Cup and push a button and presto, espresso.

Over the last couple of years I have come to rely on Susie at all hours of the night. Coffee does not keep me awake. My surrogate dad, Wayne Stewart, once told me that coffee at midnight helped him dream good dreams. It’s never helped my dreams, but it has not kept me awake.

Wayne and his oh so beautiful wife, Ruby (Mom), are on the other side now and I grieve and hurt all over but I figure if heaven is real, Wayne and Ruby have a special spot and a bunch of kids are gathered round them. They so loved Rockcastle County and taught me to love it too.

But I digress. This is supposed to be about coffee but it’s hard for me think about coffee without thinking about Wayne.

So anyway, Loretta found a pack of coffee in the freezer and some filters in the cabinet and we figured out how to make the pot work and all of a sudden we were overrun by a gaggle of little girls last Sunday evening. There are only three of them, but believe me, the Edwards girls constitute a gaggle. And easily the prettiest gaggle I will ever see.

Johnna (I call her Johnna June when I don’t call her Sugar) is nine now, I think, and Alyssa is five going on 16 and Shyanne is two and so misnamed. And my world gets so much better when these kids come tearing into my house. I am reasonably sure they invented happiness. I know for sure, they reinvented mine.

Lo and I had talked about having the hardwood cleaned but our little girls solved that problem Sunday night. Nose dives and scoots across the floor and now it shines like new. John and Celeste will have to figure out the dry cleaning bill. The laundry ain’t my fault. But wool does look pretty good on little girls.

And little girls are so beautiful on my floor. Maybe I will split the bill. Maybe I’ll just pay the whole damn thing. It was, after all, gonna cost a fortune to get the floor cleaned.

And so I had Alyssa, who can wreck an anvil, in my lap and we were doing computer stuff and I looked up at John and said, “Can I keep her?” He glanced at Celeste and she shook her head and John said, “Probably not.”

But I wanted to. I wanted to be Daddy one more time and love a little girl. I sure love this one. And she’ll be back.



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