ABSTRACT
Once upon a time, almost fifty years ago, there was a magazine advertisement for Sanka coffee. To this day, Ted Stephens, a fifty-three-year-old English professor, recalls the ad in detail because it became an integral part of a family story told about him on the Iowa farm where he grew up. “The ad,” he says, “featured Mr. Coffee Nerves, who was a vaudevillian-style evil character who twirled his mustache and wore tuxedos. I was told, ever since I can remember, that I said I would never drink coffee because it made you ‘nerfus.’ It was supposed to be a joke because I mispronounced the world ‘nervous.’ “
