Flip looked up from his computer. "Barbara " " " " (indecipherable) line." He has Alzheimer's so all the words were garbled.
"What?"
He tried again. "Barbara " " " "." No luck. He walked into the kitchen and pointed to the glass mason jar in which we keep our coffee beans.
The charades game was on. "Barbara Boxer?" Blank stare. "Barbara Streisand?" Vigorous head shaking. "Bob Marley?" He nodded excitedly. Ahhh. "Bob Marley has a line of coffee beans!" He nodded again, beaming. And Flip wants to buy them. Of course.
"Are you thinking they have pot in them?" I asked. He looked hopeful. Ganja coffee. There are many flavored coffees on the market, it's not such a stretch. Jamaican Blue Mountain is my lifelong favorite coffee, but it sells for about as much as a Porsche, another brand I hold in high regard. I can't afford either, however.
Flip was intent on supporting Bob Marley's business enterprise. I reminded him that it would not benefit Bob Marley himself since he is dead. Flip looked crushed. Apparently he had forgotten. I felt bad for both of them, but I was on a roll. "He died in 1981," I added. I could have skipped sharing that detail. It was probably mean, although I was just trying to clarify something, anything, in hopes that our world would somehow return to its formerly reasonable state.
Rohan Marley, one of the singer's sons, founded the company as a tribute to the great reggae legend. He says, "My father came from the farmland in Nine Mile. There, he learned a deep respect for nature and humanity - respect that helped guide his life and ours. He said he would return to the farm one day. That was his dream."
Bob Marley's real name was Nesta Robert Marley. Maybe they're calling the new product "Nestacafe."
