Carl's Extraordinary Coffee Bottle

One of my favorite Doniphan stories involves the friendly rivalry among the four technicians, Ralph, Carl, Terry, and Harry, who each owned an identical Aladdin thermos bottle that each of them carried out to the field when they were surveying or doing construction inspection. Each of the guys claimed that his thermos kept his coffee the hottest the longest among the four bottles.

One Monday morning (in about 1987) at about 7:30 a.m., Terry, Ralph, Harry, Rachel, and I were gathered around the break table for our morning cup of coffee before we began our day and we noticed that Carl was running a little late. This wasn't too unusual as Carl lived 30 miles away in Poplar Bluff. Someone noticed that Carl had left his coffee bottle on his desk over the weekend and someone quickly had the idea of pouring the hot coffee from the pot sitting on the coffee maker into Carl's thermos and then see what happens when Carl arrives at work, which we did.

A few minutes later, Carl pulled up in his car and the first thing that he did after coming through the front door is look over at his desk, laughed a little bit and commented that he thought that he had left his thermos in the office over the weekend. Someone then asked Carl if there was still some coffee left in his thermos. All five of us were very quiet as Carl slowly walked over to his desk, remove the stainless steel screw-on cup from his thermos and then he removed the stopper. Carl then poured the coffee from his thermos into the stainless steel cup and as we all watched the hot steam roll out of the cup from his 'three day old coffee', we all shouted out five different variations of, "Wow, Carl, your thermos is GREAT!!"

And then we all had one of the many laughs that we shared during our years working in that office.