[Life, November 15, 1954.]
This advertisement supposes an attentive audience, prepared to read every word. Did it work? It works with me. I am helpless before it. I surrender, gladly, and identify, if only for a moment, with that railroad man. I, too, welcome the question “How about some good hot coffee?” — with or without italics. I, too, welcome a “Coffee-break” — with or without a capital C, with or without quotation marks.
According to the Wikipedia article Break (work), the Pan-American Coffee Bureau was instrumental in popularizing the term coffee-break . Life has several 1952 advertisements with the Bureau’s full-length slogan, “Give yourself a coffee-break . . . and get what coffee gives to you.” Here’s one. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to 1951. Time (March 5, 1951): “Since the war, the coffee break has been written into union contracts.”
120 Wall Street was and is a skyscraper.
I am still peering ahead, as if looking for signals.
Related reading
Coffee and repetition (Submitted for Your Perusal)
All OCA coffee posts (Pinboard)
Monday, May 19, 2014
”How about some good hot coffee?”
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comments: 2
Those first few sentences (through the quotation) are a rather nice intro to a short story. But, sadly, everything after that descends into ad copy. I might have to write that story myself.
Yes, but what ad copy. “It’s full of flavor — and for only pennies a cup.”:)
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