If you’ve ever lived in one of those crazy countries that isn’t the US of A, you find yourself missing the oddest things.

When I was wandering around in the Caribbean all those years, for example, I missed the simple luxury of pulling off the road, virtually anywhere I happened to be, and buying a Snickers and coffee.

Believe it or not, there are places in the world you can’t do that.

Now, back in the USA for a few years, I’m a heavy traveler and one of the world’s foremost authorities on interstate convenience stores. And I am constantly amazed at the coffee shrines, these soaring temples to caffeine, that are showing up increasingly at stop and go’s. They’re huge, foreboding machines, with all kind of levers, pulleys and switches. They tower over you, mocking your insignificance.

They are architectural wonders.

They aren’t simple coffee pots sitting on a hot plate any more. They’re coffee islands, coffee complexes, lands o’ coffee.

Five, six, seven, eight flavors, from all over the world. Any kind of cream you could possibly want, and every kind of sweetener except the healthy one, brown sugar.

We’re a nation of coffee junkies. The American economy isn’t built on the backs of illegal immigrants, it’s build on the back of the coffee bean. Without it, the empire would collapse. In fact, that’s why the British empire collapsed, they switched to tea.

You don’t conquer third-world nations drinking tea. You get gender-change operations drinking tea.

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