A couple of bags of rich-roasted Hawaiian coffee beans recently led me to re-discover a small family relic, which lay forgotten for years in a back cupboard, until it was needed: a small, cast-metal coffee bean grinder, produced sometime in the 1930s, a grinder, it turns out, once manufactured by my family.
I had been looking for a means of grinding up beans we Investor would not lower skyscraper to meet UNESCO request-press ...
Czech National Film Archive to have new building ... had received as a gift last Christmas, when, my father dug up the object, still bearing my grandmother's family name.
She came from a family of original Czech manufacturers, the Vichrs (the name means "gale" in Czech), who among other items produced, at one time, machines like this one. It’s cool enough to look at simply as an object – but what is even more exciting is that it still works. Ok, it took some repairs, (namely replacing the original electric cord) but now it again fills up the little glass drawer with coffee grounds in no time flat. That’s pretty cool to have around the house, though a little noisy. In this respect, it will surpass an old 1930s typewriter we also have (not manufactured by my family) in usefulness. Sure, fifteen years ago I wrote a film script on that, when you could still get replacement typewriter ribbon in Prague(!), but I don’t think I’d reach for it now under any circumstances. A laptop, it isn’t.
But the grinder is different: it’s special to us as a link to our family’s history. And useful: have a listen.
I’ve long felt there were relatively few supermarkets or delis in the capital where you can have your beans ground, and I’m pretty sure the service is not as widespread as in cities in North America. Nor do I know of anyone who buys fresh beans here: the ones we received were from close friends from Canada. I kept wondering when and where I would get around to breaking the vacuum sealed packages and get to grind and try some of these exotic beans and smell their wonderful aroma. Now I can tell our friends – with some relief – that we finally got around to it.
Thanks to this little machine that for decades was gathering dust.
As I get older, the few objects handed down over the decades, not lost in the turmoil of the war, and the dark 1950s, serve as a small reminder of the family history, and this coffee bean grinder is no exception. I am thrilled that it has survived, along with the photographs of the great uncles and aunts who I cannot in all honesty name, except for one or two. I realise that what I know of my predecessors are not details but only broad strokes, and that a future project will be learning who they were and what kind of lives they led in Czechoslovakia’s First Republic. Who knows, it might even make the subject for a good script: a story even worthy of that ancient typewriter.
(radio-Prague)
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