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IS THAT MILK ON YOUR LIP?
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Good milk is one of the most important resources a nation has. Stay with me and I'll tell you what I mean.
MILK DELIVERED TO YOUR FRONT PORCH!
When you really think about milk...and how we get it, at first you wonder about it a bit. But we grew up with it! In Clovis, in the 1940's, before we got a cow, we had it delivered to our front porch every few days---six quarts of it. Our milkman was Hubert. You had to be alert and not forget it---in the summertime it could spoil in an hour or two. Ours was Collins Dairy milk, in glass bottles with a yellow logo. (Campbell's Dairy was either a red or green logo.) Any container other than a quart glass bottle, was unheard of in those days. Cardboard containers were thirty years away.)
Looking back, and considering the subject of milk, the USA was at one time, probably a three-fourths rural society. People lived on farms, and had their chickens, pigs, and cows for a big portion of their food.
CORNBREAD AND MILK
As recent as my parent's generation, many families were large, with a lot of mouths to feed. They were many miles often times from a cafe or restaurant of any kind and didn't have the cash from the egg money to go and get a sack of burgers anyway. They did have big sacks of flour, corn meal, and lard from hog killing. They'd make a big batch of cornbread for supper and have "crumble-in," that is---crumble a piece of corn bread into a glass full of good fresh "sweet milk," maybe with a little salt and pepper added. My wife's father preferred buttermilk. You'd eat this supper with a big spoon.
We had a cow in our back yard in Clovis, in the later forties, and my parents liked this "corn bread and milk" thing, but I myself could not get excited about it though I tried it a number of times. I liked burgers better.
Going all the way back to Civil War times, when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, in 1865, the Southerners were allowed to surrender their arms, and leave for home---on foot. All over the south, ragged, tired, defeated Rebs headed for home in small groups. It was common practice for them to stop at farms at might and ask for a glass of cornbread and buttermilk, and permission to sleep in the barn.
I LEARNED TO MILK (?)
When I was a boy visiting POP'S PLACE, down in Dawson County, Texas, I used to get up early to "help" him milk. He had several cows. Eight-year-olds, you know, have to try everything, it seems. I finally convinced my grandad, Pop, that I was a viable milker, so I got on the little stool, got sort of under the cow, grabbed a couple of those things on the cow, called teats, and they felt weird. I don't know which one of us was the most nervous---the cow---or I! I squeezed and squeezed--the cow got nervous--- she shifted her feet, and swished her tail. I got no milk--repeat none...and that was my final try at milking! I've never attempted it since. Better left to others, with more deft hands. (It looked real easy when others did it!)
Talking about milking, guest writer and farm boy, Wylie Dougherty tells the funny story of how his family, with nine children, lived on a ranch north of Clovis. During the time of wheat harvest when all the men in the family were harvesting early-to-late, it fell to the girls in the family to do the milking. For a few days they had a nervous, edgy bunch of cows on their hands. The girls had sharp fingernails!
I LEARNED TO CHURN!
When we had the cow in town, I never milked, but Mother found out that I could turn one of those gallon churns....the ones with big glass jars, and a paddle inside which you cranked. You'd turn and turn and finally, when your arm was worn out, pieces of butter started to form. When the jar was thick with butter, you'd scoop it into a bowl and round it on top. You had some nice butter.
MASON QUART JAR OF ICED MILK!
Yes, milk was big in those days. When you came home from plowing all day on the farm, there was a great meal of veggies, corn bread and a big glass of milk with ice cubes in it. If your food was brought to the farm, at lunch time, there would be a quart Mason jar for you, full of milk and ice cubes.
HALLELUJAH, BISCUITS AND GRAVY!
We depend on the old cows so much! Try baking or cooking without milk. What would life be like without ever having tasted---biscuits and gravy!
THE BIGGIE----ICE CREAM!
The biggie with Americans and milk is: ICE CREAM! There must be hundreds of flavors of ice cream. Ice cream means milkshakes, malts, frosted cokes, sundaes, on and on! Recent statistics show that Americans eat 1.6 billion gallons of ice cream per year; that averages about 23.2 quarts a year per person. Another source suggests 5.63 gallons per person in the U.S., more than any other country. Are you ready for this: kids between 2 and 12 eat more than 50% of all the U.S. ice cream production. If we're talking averages here, that means that kids are eating more than their share! America spends an estimated 20-24 billion dollars a year on Ice cream and related products! (Yes, cows are important to us!)
Other interesting ice cream facts: Ninety-four per cent of American households consume ice cream. Vanilla is the number one flavor. A number of the early presidents favored ice cream; several had "ice houses" on their property, storing lake and river ice or for later freezing cream. The first crank freezer was patented in 1843.
The subject of this post is "milk," and it should be noted that frozen "dairy" products date back centuries. Desserts were made from the milk of the horse, buffalo, yak, camel, cow, and goat --- dating all the way back to the T'ang dynasty in China. (618--907 A.D.)
And: read almost any military book and the soldiers are looking forward to getting back to the "states," or "the world," so they can order some big chocolate shakes and cheeseburgers.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MILK TO THE FARMER
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of milk to the farm folks, in the first 150 years of the republic. Aside from all the kitchen uses we have discussed and many more, there is the very important thing to consider----the pigs' diets. Pigs were an important and necessary food to the farmer, with the bacon, sausage, hams, shoulders, roasts, chops---most of which could be "sugar-cured" and preserved for months. All unused, soured, surplus milk was dumped into five gallon cans, along with any kitchen leftovers and served to the pigs as "slop." To a pig, it was good! It later made a good pig for eating!
To emphasize the importance that rural folks placed on their cows...and milk...I'm going to quote for you three paragraphs from my prose poem "POP," written back in the spring, and is on MIL'S PLACE.
"Times were hard in the thirties---
People worked for a dollar a day,
And were glad to get it!
I was very small then, and Dad
Needed a job.
Found one in a laundry
Down at Wink, Texas.
The nice employer gave us the use
Of a little house behind the laundry.
One day, about 1936, my grandad "Pop"
Loaded up an old cotton trailer
With a surprise for us---a gift.
He pulled that trailer all the way
From Lamesa to Wink
Behind his old tan Dodge sedan.
Drove up to our little house, got out,
Went around to the back of the trailer,
And came back around,
Leading something for us...
It was a......
cow."
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BY MIL
11/12/12
Sent from my iPad
