No Fru Fru Coffee!

Take it with you on your next cup!

Placed in honor of The Alabama Rambler (Ed Manley) from Birmingham, Alabama in honor of his historic "run" for coffee through the Starbucks Drive Thru in Dallas, TX at GW4!

For those who are asking "Huh?" here's the story.

After GW4 in Dallas I was on a midnight cache run after a few rather, uh, 'interesting' hours at the infamous Rodeo Bar with CCCooperAgency, Ladebear68, Bubbles (yeah, there's a story there too... she wanted a cowboy, so I got her one!) and MommaDirtClod when the request was made for coffee.

Cool. Rambler likes his coffee.

But.

At that hour the only thing open is Starbucks. They sell a lot of things. Coffee ain't one of them. They got all sorts of girly fru-fru stuff, but no coffee.

So I get to the ordering station and who speaks to me but this squeaky-voiced girly-man fella. He simpered "Good Morning!! May I offer you a Double Latte Chocolate Steamed Creme Ribbons-and-Lace whatever-it-was?" Dang, we're off to a rough start already. Everybody in the car is laughing at the look on my face.

Well, I'm trying to make the best of this rather confusing menu. I mean to tell you they have A LOT of stuff on that menu for a coffee shop, but I don't see no just plain coffee. That's all I want, not much to ask, just a cup of coffee. This is a coffee shop, right?

Wrong. Nothing on that menu says just "Coffee".

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

They got coffee called Ethiopia Sidamo. Haven't been to Ethiopia, but from the pictures on TV I don't think I'd care for their coffee. It costs more than an Ethiopian makes in a year anyway.

They got Brazil Ipanema Bourbon™. I used to like bourbon. Quite a lot, actually. But that ain't coffee. Even if it is trademarked. If they had some George Dickel coffee I might be tempted though. I've been to Ipanema, didn't see any George Dickel there either.

They got Orange Crème Frappuccino® Blended Crème. Nice if you're in a candy store, but what the hell has it got to do with coffee?

So I asked this girly-man "Can I please have whatever you got that's closest to Maxwell house, don't do nothin' to it, I don't want no girly fru-fru coffee. Y'all got any coffee?"

Well, I really was talking about all these girly fru-fru coffee-things they got; I wasn't thinking about the girly-man on the speaker. Really. Each to their own and all that. Folks in the car were laughing at me already, for my redneck simpleton coffee preferences I reckon, when this rather haughty girly-man voice comes back on the speaker with "Sir, do you insult ALL of the people you do business with?"

I guess you know how that went over. They haven't stopped laughing yet. Over a year later just the words "Rambler don't do no fru-fru coffee" and they're off again.

Hills Bros. That's coffee. I'd write Starbucks and recommend they start selling it, but they'd just trick it up with that girly fru-fru stuff.