We're required to write a certain number of posts a week on this website. Lacking an idea, I guess I'll try my luck and write about a coffee can.

I'm not sure when I became a regular coffee drinker. I recall about 20 years ago when news director Larry Allen and I would keep that coffee pot going full blast most of the morning. I got to the point where I would get some hot and jump so I quit. Those who know me realize I'm not one to wash out my cup, so it wasn't really cold turkey. I'm sure there was enough residue mixed with the warm water I began drinking to get me a little fix for a few weeks. I've never been able to tolerate coffee after early morning. My mother and mother-in-law still drink it at night. It sounds as appealing as a cold beer at 5AM.

What about the containers themselves? Years ago the coffee jars came with metal lids. I recall my dad's cousin screwing the lids to the bottom of a shelf in his garage. He then filled the empty jars with screws and nails and screwed the jars back onto the overhanging lids. It took up little space having them hang rather than scattered all over a work bench.

If you cut out both ends, they work fine in placing them over small plants in the spring. It helps protect them from the wind.

My most vivid memory of a coffee can would include Great-uncle John. He and Aunt Mabel were Wisconsin hillbillies. They lived in a two-room house at the end of a long driveway in northern Wisconsin with no running water and no indoor bathroom. I remember when we visited there once I had to eat my dinner sitting on a milk can because they had only four chairs. Mabel had no teeth and tied her nylons in a knot just below her knees. John was her fourth husband and was toothless as well. Uncle John chewed snus. I can't even find a reference on the internet to snus. Today's tobacco chewer conjures up images of athletes  or a big bulge in the cheek. Uncle John was like many of the old snus chewers in his day, unshaven, toothless and dressed in overalls. He'd sit there with his coffee can, then a "spittoo" and shoot a stream into his coffee can. There would always be a stain on a snus chewer's chin, sort of like today's tattoos. It made a statement of who you were.

My goodness, I've typed more than 400 words on a coffee can. I should have made it a two-part series but that would have been inhumane.

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