Remembering The Saucer Sipper Generation

So there I was standing by the coffeemaker here at the Radio Ranch (it's one of my favorite spots in the building) and was chatting with a couple of my hard working co-workers, just shootin' the breeze, swappin' lies, spreadin' the bull, ya know.

'What's new?', 'How ya doin'?', that kind of thing....when it popped into my beautifully sculpted bald head:

My Grandma Achterhoff drank a lot of coffee in her day.  A lot!  And never ever, not once, not one time, do I remember her drinking it from a cup.  Nope.

She was a saucer sipper.

When I mentioned that, one of my older (not as old as me) pal's said 'Wow, now that I think of it, my Grandpa was the same way, always sipped it from a saucer.'

I wonder if that was a generational thing?

My Grandma passed away in 1971 at the age of 91.  Yep, strange as it seems (at least to me!), I knew people that were born in the 1800's. Grandma was born in 1880, had lost her husband back in the late 1940's.  My Dad (her son) was the youngest of nine kids, born in 1920...so Grandma was, shall we say, elderly by the time I landed on the planet.

Every Saturday night we would make the long 9 mile trek to her house in Edgerton, visit, and eventually have coffee.  And while I would have something cold from the fridge, the adults would have coffee.

And Grandma would always....always...pour a little coffee into the saucer, blow on it, and sip it.Then repeat, repeat, repeat until the cup, and saucer, was emptied.  And it was all natural for the little guy that was me (I was just 16 when she died).  It's just the way it was.

Then I forgot about that little tidbit for years and years and years. That morning, for some unknown reason, bingo!  It pops into my head and I hear 'Yep, my Grandpa did the very same thing'.

So it got me to wonderin' (I do that a lot too).  Was it a generational thing?

My Grandparents were the generation before the so-called 'Greatest Generation'.  Their kids fought in World War II.  Many of them came from what was often called 'The Old Country'.  For my family, the 'old country' was Holland...oops, sorry, the Netherlands.  So now I wonder if it was just a Dutch kind of thing, or if it was a part of that generation.

The generation of saucer sippers.

So tell me, was your Grandpa or Grandma (or Great Grandpa or Grandma) a saucer sipper? If you need to, ask your parents. Just curious.