The thirty-cup coffee urn

Fellowship halls reserve one wall outlet without ever discussing it, and the thirty cup urn claims that outlet by nine fifteen most Sundays, cord looped twice to keep the length manageable. The drum is aluminum, dented in one consistent spot from a folding table edge that has never been moved to accommodate it. A center post threads down through a wire percolation basket, and above the spigot sits a small round window, more suggestion than gauge, through which the coffee's color can be checked against nothing in particular. Grounds settle into the basket in a shape that predates anyone's memory of the individual pots; volunteers top it off between services rather than rinse it clean. A strip of masking tape below the spigot reads DECAF in handwriting that has changed at least twice, evidence of a rotating roster more than any change of mind about the coffee itself. The orange indicator light cycles on with some regularity partway through the sermon, which the ushers have learned to read as a fifteen minute warning. Thirty cups is the stated capacity; eighteen is the honest average, the remainder poured out during cleanup into a sink not built to receive hot liquid in that volume, which complains about it audibly every time. Operating the urn requires a working outlet, a bag of grounds, and someone willing to remember the DECAF tape exists, which may be the whole of its appeal to a congregation already managing harder logistics that morning.

Doreen Fitch