Muertos coffee mug

Mug mug mug
Coffee mug
Gonna clear the haze
Liquid proof
That I can win this race
Coffee mug
The grip that keeps me tall
My inter-link
Keeps me questing all
I don't need no booze or drugs
I just chug-a-lug-o my coffee mug
And I don't need no kiss and hug
I just chug-a-lug-o my coffee mug
They haven't banned
My liquid drug of choice
There's too may hooked
And they've got too much voice
So for the moment
We're all pretty good to go
With 98 cups
With 98 more to go
Chorus
Here a bean, there a bean
Everywhere a mean mean
Bean Chug-a-lug-o, my
Coffee mug mug mug mug

I figured that since I bought my first bag of whole bean coffee in months (or any kind of coffee for that matter) that I would write about the Muertos mug pictured above. It's something I don't think I'll part with.

This mug comes from a small coffee shop in Phoenix, Arizona called Dos Estrella's coffee house. Go ahead and try to google it cause you won't find it, it's been closed for many many years now. This little coffee shop was just down the street from where I worked at the time which was a large upper level retailer. It was the mid-90's and that whole coffee craze was catching on from this little town in the Northwest called Seattle. It was the time of the small coffee house/shop before a certain large coffee retailer extended it's tentacles across this here planet.

I met this woman around that time and well she changed my life. This little coffee shop is where we went on our first date. We drank coffee, played chess and stayed up all night talking. I bought this mug that night and some whole bean coffee to show her I was into supporting the local economy. Long story short and many folks who know me IRL I ended up moving to the other side of the planet to live with her.

This coffee mug lived through that purge of stuff I owned in Phoenix at the time. It survived two LONG flites to a tiny island in the Pacific and moves she and I did on the island. It survived a typhoon and countless small earthquakes while we were there. Many a morning she and I would sit in bed or out on our small balcony drinking coffee from the same mug. It's a helluva memory that makes this grizzled old guy kinda misty eyed.

Things did not work out between us for reasons I won't discuss here, it was noones fault we were just headed in different directions. She's AWESOME hands down. The mug survived another purge of materials and made it back state side in a suit case to what would be my home for the next 14 years. Denver, Colorado.

This coffee mug was one of the few things I owned when I first moved to Denver in that first cold November. I held onto it when I was freezing my ass off in a illegally sub let apartment I was crashing in at the time, It survived move after move after move while in good ol' DenCo. Lots of late afternoon and morning cups of coffee on various porches and balconies all over the city and county of Denver. It was there during every important event in my life since the mid-90's.

Somewhere along the way the handle broke off. I had a minor melt down because of it. I got it glued back on and it's been fine ever since. It made the move back to Atlanta when I came back to help take care of the parents. Oddly enough this coffee mug other than the Voodoo has been the only consistent thing in my life over the last 20 plus years. Some folks would consider that a damn shame. I'm not of that frame of mind.

I hold that coffee mug and remember what it's like to fall in love. I see it as filled with passion and hope always the start of a new day or stretching a great day (or night) a little more further. It's the vessel that has not only woken me up. It's healed me as well (many cups of thera-flu) and has had more than it's fair share of splashes of whiskey or bourbon help find it's way to my liver. 

It's a coffee mug, a thing, a possession. Thing is that it's got substance, a history. I've been happy when it was literally (and I do mean literally) my only mug. Have I bought many many mugs over the years? Sure I have and they have all been given away or sold as well. No matter how crammed the cupboard is with coffee mugs I tend to grab this one first.

That dear friends is the story of my Muertos coffee mug.

Thanks for reading.