Weekly Newsletter

When I was growing up in Roseto, Mary Bert’s and Joe Trigs were the place to go to get your morning coffee along with some choice sayings. Their customers would get the lastest town news and also what we call in Italian, “Rompere le palle” or tease each other. When I was sent to Joe Trigs to get the Sunday paper or during school days going to Mary Bert’s after lunch to meet my friends as we headed for school recess, I was always fascinated by watching the many characters that would be there joking around, smiling and bantering. I’d hear them asking for a cup of Joe and always wondered where the name came from. So I felt the need to do some research and I found out that there are actually three theories.

Some theorize that it all started in 1913 when Josephus Daniels was appointed secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson.  As the story goes, on June 1, 1914, Secretary Joe issued General Order 99. Order 99 prohibited alcohol aboard naval vessels.  From then on, the strongest drink of any kind allowed on naval ships has been coffee. The presumably disgruntled and sober sailors weren’t happy with the changes, so they started to call coffee a “cup of Joe” out of spite English language researchers lean more on the overall language behind the term “cup of Joe” than the military tale.  The earliest known entrance of “cup of Joe” into the English language lexicon wasn’t until 1930, 16 years after Order 99. The first of the two theories is that “Joe” is a bizarre shortened version of two other slang terms for coffee: java and jamoke.  Jamoke itself is another combination slang word: java and mocha. Some  how it was shortened from “cup of jamoke” to “cup of Joe”. The other theory focuses on the name “Joe”.  Joe is a slang name for “the common man”.  Where also Eat at Joe’s originated hence, a “cup of Joe” is the “common man’s drink”. Regardless the large coffee chains just can’t compete with the hometown feel of Roseto’s coffee shop. Here’s a joke that may have been heard there, “A husband and wife are fighting about who has to make coffee in the morning. The wife says, “You wake up before me you should do it.” The husband says, “It’s part of the cooking so it’s your responsibility.” “No.” the wife says. “It’s in the bible that the man makes coffee.” The husband says “Prove it.” The wife goes and gets the bible and sure enough there it is, “HEBREWS.”