COFFEE RUNS in the Johnstons' veins.

My three sons (note to Hollywood: My Three Sons sounds like a good name for a television show) make their living selling fancy-pants cups of coffee at outrageous prices to caffeine-addicted people. The boys inherited their fancy-pants coffee-selling skills from their father, whom the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston has identified on legal documents as me.

I was in the high-priced java business before Howard Schultz was out of short pants and couldn't even spell Starbucks. I got into the business in the mid-1960s by opening a coffeehouse in beautiful downtown Everett. The place was called The Three Thieves, so named after an unfortunate incident my two partners and I had with a pair of stolen tires.

After we became established, we told people we named the coffeehouse after the high prices we charged for coffee. That sounded more respectable than saying we named it because someone accused us of stealing tires.

The funny thing about owning a coffeehouse in the mid-1960s was that no one knew anything about mocha java or lattes. Especially in downtown Everett. Not only were our customers completely out of it, we didn't have a clue, either. So clueless were we that now, more than 30 years later, I can make this confession: We made everything from instant coffee!

It wasn't too hard to load up a nasty-looking mug with hot water and put in a few tablespoons of instant coffee, give it a shot of whipped cream and watch someone try to drink it. Ha!

Did it taste bad? Of course, it tasted bad. It was espresso! It was supposed to taste bad. If you wanted something that tasted good, you could go to Woolworth's and pay a quarter for a cup.

At The Three Thieves, you paid a buck or more to taste something no one in their right minds would drink. Plus you had to pay a cover charge of 50 cents to get into the place just to drink it.

If you didn't want one of the specialty coffees, you could always have the tea. As I remember, we had two types of teas: Irish and Russian. They were made from Lipton's Instant Tea, with a spoonful of instant coffee for the Irish, and two spoonfuls for the Russian. We figured the Russians liked their tea stronger.

For the folks who didn't want a hot drink, we had a wide variety of Italian iced drinks, which, of course, were made out of cola, 7UP and Kool-Aid.

The Three Thieves seated more than 100 people, and we made $300 the first weekend we were open. That was how much it cost us to open the place.

We didn't just serve drinks. We had folksingers on Friday and Saturday nights and a jazz quartet on Sundays. We also had weird paintings on the walls. It was a hip place to be.

No one died from eating and drinking there. And the Everett police only came in a few times. Once was to investigate a complaint from a mother that we were singing obscene songs (and we certainly were) and the other times were to get free cups of instant coffee and listen to the jazz band.

I would have stayed in the coffee business and become a millionaire, but Uncle Sam needed me to help lose the war in Vietnam, so I sold the business in 1966 and left the country.

Now my three sons tell me they use real coffee grounds and they seem to actually know what they are doing. Some things aren't passed from generation to generation.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. He can be reached at stevejohnst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.