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YOU CAN TRY TO YANK THAT MEDIUM DUNKIN D'S FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS, but I won't let it go. You can't have it. I'll eat pasta every day if I have to. I'll turn the heat down below 72 in February. I'll deprave my children of those private piano lessons but I won't give up my medium coffee with milke, no sugar.

I don't even have to get out of the car every morning. I just pull into the drive thru and yell my order into the speaker, which gets repeated to me at least twice because one morning, they did put sugar in it and heard from me the next day. It wasn't pretty.

It's less than 2 bucks . . . you can't even an anything-a-chinno fom Starbucks for twice that amount and I can make it last all morning. Last year, a police officer was shot and killed at my Dunkin D's. It closed down for a week. When it reopened, the owners put a donation jar at the drive thru for the slain officer's family. The jar was stolen. But I wasn't detered. I'm a little more aware of my surroundings now as I approach the speaker, but let's face it, in an economy as depressing as Thanksgiving with my Uncle Charlie, I need one vice. I look forward to it on my drive in. I see the same woman's smiling face as I flip that little plastic tag open and take my first, piping hot sip.

Who cares if banks are collapsing. People getting laid off by the thousands? Yeah, I feel badly for them, but Dunkin D's lives on. It's an American tradition with no American-born owners. That's the beauty of this country. That's the beauty of a medium with milk, no sugar.