Ode To Carnation Milk !!

 

I was 15 years old before my folks brought a frigidaire into the house. Maybe Cindy Anne or JIm remember some of the whiskery ´jokes from that era....... What did Elmer Fudd say when they caught him sleeping in the refrigerator ? He simply excused himself saying that he thought it was a " Westinghouse " !! It was , in fact , a Westinghouse that they bought and it is still workig well in my basement where I have converted it into a freezer.Now since refrigeration in private homes was not common in my area until the early 50s we depended greatly on daily milk delivery when it was available during the war and even afterwards so folks counted on and stockpiled , when possible , cans of evaporated milk........ either Borden's or Carnation . I can still envision the Borden cow , Elsie and the slogan.... "good milk from contented cows ".... I wonder how they figured out whether the cows were happy or not ? And when Roy Meade dropped off our two quart bottles of milk at the back door at 5: 30 a.m. on a cold Winter morn ...... and going to get them at 8:00 a.m. .... finding three - inch columns of top cream thrust upwards .... out of the bottle ....... the effect caused by Mother Nature's 20 below zero weather. Great memories ..... and oft times hard to fully portray to others.

Mom and Dad used Carnation milk on almost everything .... but especially on their cereals  in   the morning  and  in tea  and coffee always ! .......... and they went on using evaporated milk until their deaths ..... or lastcall / closing time as my Dad often put it........well into their upper eighties. So when my Dad finally answered the call in 1986 my Mom found herself alone and no longer had my father to browbeat into driving her from one supermarket to another all around Saint John  to buy up  cans of Carnation milk on sale so she cried hard times to neighbours , friends , etc  getting them to do her bidding ! To our sweet nextdoor neighbour , Katy , for example , " T'were yuh  goin'uptown today , Katy dear , would it be too much to ask yuh a favour ? And then she 'd explain to Katy that at such or such a store Carnation milk was on sale ... 3 cans for $ 1.50 .... which was a real bargain ! Anyways I also went home more often after Dad's death .... a good 9 - hour drive from here ......and she would do the same to me.

The last time she sent me for Carnation milk was in early 1992 just before her final hospitalisation. She had found coupons for the dadblasted milk from some new market which had just opened up north of Saint John on the road to Sussex... a small hamlet named Quispamsis....... often referred to by Josie ( my Mom ) as "Quithpamthith " when she wanted to put on the wee girl act and  be coy ! The price that day has stayed embedded in my mind to this day........... $00.63 a can , two for a dollar !! I brought her home three flats of twenty each !! and stored them away in her closet under the stairs. Josie died in 1993 and I remember well delivering 141 cans of Carnation milk to the  Saint Vincent de Paul Society in our local parish for their soup kitchens and the poor. The poor thing would die a second death were she to see the price we pay nowadays for  but one can of her beloved milk  Maith thú , mo mhuirnín ! And a fine gal you are , darling !!