Photo Credit: Associated Press

Sunday morning’s greeting, delivered by my wife. There was a time when this troubling news would have required my leaving the house to secure the caffeine necessary to jump-start our day. But we have a Keurig, and although it only delivers its goodness one portion at a time, it saved me from putting on pants to wait in a slow-moving drive-through line so I could engage in forced sociability through a garbled speaker in exchange for coffee. 

Chris carried the news like the weight of a lost family member, not a countertop kitchen appliance. When I asked why, she reminded me the last time our coffee maker kicked the carafe it required multiple attempts to find a suitable replacement. Ah yes, it did. We worked our way through various offerings from a home store; each one adorned with a control panel like a jumbo jet and a laundry list of options, none of which seemed to be able to deliver a pot of drinkable coffee at the time we needed it. A simple model pulled from a department store shelf finally saved us. I thought it would act as a stop-gap measure until we found a more suitable replacement, but instead, the basic Mr. Coffee brand coffee maker faithfully served us seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for a respectable number of years. A few simple buttons and a self-explanatory process kept us caffeinated and content. 

I checked the department store website and reassured her there would be a new Mr. Coffee resting on our kitchen counter before the end of the day. However, an internet search is like a visit to a big box hardware store. You not only get what you came for but leave with a cartful of items you didn't know you needed and some you gather, “just in case.”  In this case, the historian in me walked away from the search with a cartful of information on the history of the coffee maker. 

Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell gave us the lightbulb and the telephone, two indispensable items. But how many of us have an automatic drip coffeemaker on our kitchen countertop yet have never heard the name, Vincent Marotta? Vince, a former professional baseball and football player and then real estate investor, wondered why restaurant coffee tasted better than his coffee at home. At the time, most people used a stovetop percolator that too often recirculated already brewed coffee through the beans creating an end product more appropriate for removing paint from a wall than enjoying it with a slice of lightly buttered toast. Marotta came up with an idea for a more efficient machine and, with his business partner Samuel Glazer, introduced Mr. Coffee, the first popular mass-produced coffee maker. Although Edmund Able, an engineer they hired to develop the idea, was awarded the patent, Marotta is credited as the creator of the modern-day appliance.   

Mr. Coffee arrived on the scene in 1972 and, in three years, captured fifty percent of the US market. The brand eventually rose to pop culture status. 

Joe DiMaggio, a baseball legend, became the company spokesperson in 1973. His marriage with Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe lasted only 274 days, but his relationship with Mr. Coffee lasted nearly 20 years. Although other brands sold automatic drip machines, the name Mr. Coffee became synonymous with coffee makers, similar to Kleenex for facial tissues or Google for internet searches - like the one I did to find a replacement for our expired appliance. 

One of Mr. Coffee's pop culture appearances was in the theme song for the hit television series, Cheers. The lyrics work their way through a succession of life’s problems soothed only by a stop at a place where everyone knows your name, and they're always glad you came. In this case, the show’s bar. The song's extended version topped the record charts after Cheers became a hit and the coffee maker appears in a verse that begins, "You roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee's dead."  The exact situation we found ourselves in on Easter morning. A stop for a cold one at my neighborhood bar would have offered some soothing relief from the loss of our kitchen friend, but Chris was looking for a longer-term solution.

Later that day I drove across town to buy a new one. Although I made sure the store had them in stock when I searched, I didn't look close enough to recognize it was closed for Easter. But I didn’t return home empty handed. This is a popular and widely available brand, and not all stores shuttered for the holiday. It's still early in our relationship, but the coffee maker is delivering just as Joe promised, waking up before us every morning to brew a perfect cup of coffee. 

Unlike the inventors Henry Ford, Nicholas Tesla, and Orville and Wilbur Wright, everyone doesn’t know Vince Marotta’s name. But everyone knows the name of the invention he introduced that changed the lives of a coffee-drinking nation.

I guess that makes him Mr. Coffee.