The Muffin Man

Living in a Body

The Muffin Man

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The Muffin Man

Episode 33 -- Coffee Break, Part 1

Hal Walker

Sep 24, 2022

Hi. I’m Hal. Today begins a multi-part series called “Coffee Break.” Grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea, sit back and enjoy! I’ll be drinking water. :) I’m truly grateful for this outlet to express myself and I’m so grateful for your caring attention. Please feel free to share.

The Muffin Man

My Dad was a Presbyterian minister, but my family’s religion was the ten o’clock coffee break — strong coffee with half and half and a pastry. If it doesn’t qualify as a religion, the Walker family coffee break definitely qualifies as an institution. In fact, back in 1993, my mom made individualized batik t-shirts for every member of the family. Each unique shirt pictured a steaming cup of coffee and that family member’s pastry of choice. The text at the bottom read, “A Walker Family Institution.” In my family, coffee break runs deep. It’s a ceremony. It’s a ritual. And It goes back generations.

My grandfather, Papa Trostrud, preferred a bakery doughnut with his coffee. Papa T would follow it with a Lucky Strike cigarette and a chore list for the grandchildren. My mom, who carries on the 10 o’clock coffee break tradition to this day, prefers an apple danish. She always brewed Folger’s Dark Columbian, but she treats herself to a Starbucks on special occasions. My dad was less particular. He loved mom’s homemade rhubarb coffee cake, but he’d settle for some cookies from Aldi. Interestingly, my dad drank coffee everyday but had no idea how to brew a cup for himself. Mom was in charge of that.

When I was young, every summer, my family would drive 14 hours to Birmingham, Alabama. Two weeks a year in the South had a profound impact on my development as a human being. Sometimes we’d make the trip in one long day, so we’d leave home very early in the morning. Once we got on the road, right around 10 o’clock, my mom would break out the coffee and the pastries. From her thermos, she’d pour us each a little cup of coffee with a little bit o’ half and half. On a napkin, we’d get a piece of the pastry. It was the perfect combination — sugar, flour, fat and caffeine. I can almost feel it now — the way the whole car would light up and we’d all get happy. I can still feel the warmth of that morning sun in the window and the familial love of all six of us jammed in that blue station wagon with no seat belts.

My pastry of choice was the muffin. Some time during college, I became somewhat of a muffin man. I was the kind of guy that resented my home town for years ‘cause it lacked a quality muffin. When I first moved back home after college, I took the matter into my own hands. I started baking my own muffins. Without a recipe and without measuring cups, every day, I would end up with a different result. I'll never forget mixing up those ingredients in my mom’s kitchen — flour, eggs, honey, molasses, oat bran, brown sugar, banana, walnuts, salt, baking soda and baking powder. I’d eat six or eight of them for my coffee break and coffee break lasted all day long. Back then, coffee and muffins were my friend. They were my sustenance, my courage and my inspiration.

In the 90’s, the old Diner offered a good treasure bran muffin and a nice cherry almond muffin. But after the Diner closed, Kent had nothing to offer in the muffin department. I loved Brady’s Cafe for the atmosphere and the poetry readings, but Brady’s squeezed it’s muffins out of a bag. Just so you know, I refuse to eat a lemon poppyseed muffin that was squeezed out of a bag. When the Zephyr Restaurant opened, we finally had a good sweet bread in town. They used to sell me a whole bag full of bread ends for just a few bucks. I was quite satisfied with those ends toasted with butter. Hallie’s mom, Shannon and I used to enjoy Zephyr bread for coffee break when we lived in the coop. The “coop” was a legendary bachelor pad/rehearsal space that we lived in for about a year before we married. It was just a two minute bike ride for coffee and sweet bread from the Zephyr.

I think the muffins from Susan’s Coffee and Tea were probably squeezed out of a bag, too, but Susan’s did have some good strong coffee. I enjoyed the discounted price of the day-old muffins there, but I had to settle for low-fat apple cinnamon and morning glory. They were wrapped in plastic, spongy, microwaved and really mediocre. Thank God the low-fat movement is over. That was a rough time for muffins. I used to ride two year old Hallie in a bike seat over to Susan’s for our coffee break. We’d sit in the grass on front campus and eat day old muffins together. Hallie learned early about her dad’s love of muffins and her family’s commitment to coffee break.

I’m not even gonna mention the sweet bread at Starbucks — four dollars for a piece of bread? You gotta be kidding me.

I used to drive hours out of my way to Yellow Springs, Ohio as a kind of muffin pilgrimage. The “Good” muffin at the Emporium is truly the best muffin in the state. It’s the perfect combination of sweet, salty, nutty, chewy, crunchy and “healthy.” Add a strong cup o’ coffee with cream and the granola atmosphere of downtown Yellow Springs and I was in coffee break heaven. I spent several weeks as an artist-in-residence at Mills Lawn Elementary in Yellow Springs and I’d bring several "Good" muffins with me to school. My coffee break-in-a-bag and a styrofoam cup lasted all day long.

Like my parents, I probably could have gone on enjoying coffee and muffins for years without much consequence, but everything changed in the Spring of 1991. I got sick. On Friday morning, I ran my usual six miles, drank my usual coffee and ate my usual muffins. Then on Friday night, I performed at an open poetry reading at Brady’s Cafe. On Saturday, I woke up with weird symptoms in my body that never went away. Overnight, I became someone who couldn’t run across the street without needing to lie down. Overnight, I entered the world of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Finding no help in the medical profession, I began the process of trying to find a healing regimen on my own. With the help of a few books and my friend JP, I became convinced that it was diet that would reboot my immune system. It was diet that would cleanse the toxins from my body and it was diet that would bring me back to optimum health. It became clear to me that coffee break was in the way of getting back to precious good health. This was when my years long battle with coffee break began.

That’s part one of a four part series on Coffee Break. Next week, we get to hear my mom, my sisters and my daughters perspective on the whole thing. Have a beautiful Saturday! Enjoy living in that body of yours. Thank you so much for reading. Hal