As a kid I saw saucering quite a bit...my guess is, times were harder, and folks used a small amount of coffee grounds (expensive) and a lot of water (cheap) and boiled the living hell out of it to get every last bit of good out of the grounds. Nowadays people who actually like good coffee...don't allow it to come to a boil...ever. The first logging camp I lived and worked out of, the second batch of morning coffee, the old grounds were left in and the new grounds and water were added and the mess boiled again. Note I use the word boiled, not perked, not brewed.
I recall either batch as being hot, bitter as gall, and black as hell...a lot of sugar and milk was used. Food was good, plenty of it, but nothing was wasted. As an example, Bake day was Sunday night and Wednesday, leftover stale bread was used to make big pans of bread and fruit pudding, which was great stuff, but just showed nothing was wasted. After breakfast we made our own lunches at the "spike table" mainly leftovers, porkchops, chicken, meatloaf etc bread, rat cheese and condiments and mountains of hard boiled eggs. Mostly us young single guys lived in camp and the married older guys commuted from home. We secretly felt sorry for them, what pitiful lunches most of them had.

Well this is a fine pickle we're in, should'a listened to Joe McCarthy and George Orwell I guess.