Instead of the usual tea and a book feature, this month maybe coffee and a book would be better -- namely two Chicago gems like
Stewarts' Red Eye Coffee and Nelson Algren's
Never Come Morning. The Stewart Coffee Company has been around since 1913, and Stewarts' Red Eye blend came about when Stewarts was given a top secret World War II military assignment of creating a brew to keep U.S. fighter pilots alert and at their sharpest. Around the same time, Chicago author Nelson Algren was prowling the streets of the northwest side following the mostly troubled lives of characters like Bruno Bicek, Steffi Rostenkowski, Momma Tomek and Catfoot Nowagrodski. Algren's realistic yet finely worded style and his compassion for those who can never quite seem to get on the right side of the tracks is best known in his later novel,
The Man with the Golden Arm, but
Never Come Morning is an equally worthy read. And I'm guessing he drank many a cup of coffee in late night vigils while watching the happenings around the Division, Milwaukee and Ashland triangle -- or while typing his long manuscripts -- and I'm sure he would have appreciated a dose of Red Eye had it been available to him at the time. Fortunately, it's available to us all now and it also has a great coffee can design.
