The COVID #@$#!! The whole virus thing has been hard on my mother and our business, Nancy She is the founder of Fugawee. Age ninety, and she is doing great. She is still independent and lives on her own. Nancy’s latest project that she is finishing up is a book on our family and the letters back and forth from a family home in Florida and my father. He was a Merchant sailor and was away a lot, up to eleven months at a time. He could be ANYWHERE in the world!  I remember watching TV about 1968-69, and they were showing how the Vet Cong were setting up IED’s for ships using anti-aircraft missiles along these long rivers the vessel had to go up to unload. Munition ships like my dad was sailing carried 500,000 tons (one billion pounds) of hi explosives, bombs, bullets, artillery rounds, all the stuff that went boom. He would be in faraway places. They would be written on onion skinned paper to save weight. The letters had cool stamps and marked “US Air Mail” on them from coming from  Far away places like Cat Lai bay, Saigon, Da nang. They didn’t sound safe, according to Walter Cronkite was saying. I was eight years old. I’m sure I will be quite embarrassed by some of the passages that come out in the new book. But we will talk about her new book another time.

Fugawee’s small colonial teapot.

Fugawees Cowboy coffee pot

Teapots and coffee pots are very different. Teapots In Europe came in the early 1600’s.  Dutch traders brought it back from the orient and the method to brew it too.  The English upper class were enjoying tea by the 1660’s. The Dutch-owned the market and in 1689 tea was taxed at 25% in England but the tax was reduced to 5% in 1692 So by the early 1700’s tea was widely enjoyed all over the world.

  Coffee entered the European markets around the 1600’s coming up through Italy and to Europe. Coffee was brewed by putting it in a pot and boiling it. When pouring it out you did so slowly and tried to keep the grounds in the pan. Over the years there were many different tries at a mobile coffeepot. The first viable transportable coffee manufacturing device that was rugged enough was the cowboy coffee pot. Tapered sides to keep the grounds in the bottom and a crude filter in front of the spouts internal spillway. The spout being located towards the top of the pot, and a handle

And now the curmudgeon part:

  All this is because boiled tea leaves float to the top and boiled coffee grounds sink.  

Also, Coffee is the Second most traded commodity in the world only being surpassed by Oil.