"Here's to the Milk in the Little Red Can"

For Lack of A Better Title

I don't dislike all evaporated milk. It certainly has its uses, it's handy to store for long periods without refrigeration, it's (relatively speaking) cheaper than whole milk, volume for volume. It's fortified and enriched with all sorts of necessary vitamins, etc. I keep at least a half-dozen cans in my cupboard. I nearly always use it when making potato soup, for instance, which I truly like and willingly eat year-round. I often add straight-from-the-can evaporated milk when making other dishes and baked goods.

My long-standing (70 years) revulsion dislike of a certain brand of evaporated milk has its origin in circumstances surrounding my kindergarten experience, reported yesterday, in Fall, 1939.

Faithful reader Snowbrush (thank you) asked in a comment if I was required to consume said evaporated milk in an undiluted condition. He was right on the mark, except for the "required" part! However, let me hasten to say that it was not anyone at the school that was responsible for my lifelong aversion to this particular product.

Herein hangs the tale.

I have already reported that I walked home from my kindergarten class. After a few days, I realized that one of my classmates was walking the same route. Her home was closer to school than mine, so we generally walked along together until we reached her front gate, at which time I would continue the remaining few blocks alone. (White picket-fence gates can cause me to have the shivers sometimes, too.)

As you read this story, keep in mind that this was 1939, not quite the tail-end of the Great Depression, and there were many people, including children, who were thin and generally malnourished, not necessarily because of the lack of purchasable items, but because of a lack of funds with which to do so. I'm sure my family fell into this category. (An aside: my mama told me not many years before she died that she would ride the bus across the Rio Grande to Juarez, Mexico to buy much of what we ate because the dollar-to-Peso rate was very favorable at that time. She said she always bought all our meat in Mexico, and didn't know, and didn't care, much, if the meat was beef, goat, horse, cat, or dog. Meat was meat and she couldn't afford to buy it in El Paso. Only God knows what I've actually eaten in my life.)

Back to the white picket-fence gate.

My walking companion's mother would always meet her at the gate, with an open can of "***" brand evaporated milk in her hand, which she would hand to her daughter with a big smile on her face, and stand there while said child (whose name I have obliterated from my memory forgotten) drank the entire can of milk -- unchilled and definitely undiluted! That was OK by me. Said child evidently relished it and it was their routine, her after-school snack, as it were. I would wave goodbye and continue on my way.

All was well until the day her mother was waiting at the gate with TWO opened cans of milk in her hands. No doubt she had taken pity on my scrawny and undernourished appearance and figured that few extra calories would be good for me! She handed me a can of milk. I placed it to my lips and took a sip.

Yech! Urp! Phewey! And any other nasty descriptor you care to add. I don't know (and I don't care) what vitamins and other swell stuff "***" added to their milk, or how wonderful this could be in the way of nutrition, to me that was the most foul-tasting, foul-smelling, unpalatable liquid that had ever passed my lips. But, under the watchful eyes of the mother, who stood there smiling at me like Cruella de Vil, I drank the whole thing, and said "Thank you" just like my mother had taught me. Then, I went home and threw up -- several times.

"Cruella" tried several more times to entice me to share her daughter's afternoon treat, but I screamed and hollered and threw myself on the sidewalk politely declined. I'm sure she despaired of my continued existence as my family, evidently, was too poor to feed me properly.

To this day, I cannot tolerate "***" evaporated milk. Like some scanning electronic sensor, I can detect one part in a trillion (perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much.) The most bitter and or fragrant coffee cannot hide it from my taste buds and olfactory nerves. I can detect it when it has been used in baked goods. I can tell if there is an open can in anyone's kitchen.

Hide your eyes, male readers, if there are any of you, or skip the following sentences. When my baby son had to be placed on formula because of some physical problems I was having producing breast milk, the doctor gave me the directions to making formula with "***" milk. I begged and pleaded until he agreed that "C********" evaporated milk would be acceptable for the formula. What was going on? Did "***" give the doctors a kick-back for recommending their product for baby formula? I'm joking, I'm joking!!! Please don't sue me!

I still see "***" evaporated milk in the grocery stores, so someone must be buying it. If you, Dear Reader, are one of those, I applaud you, and wish you well. You are a braver soul than I. Please accept my apologies for maligning your favorite brand of evaporated milk. However, whenever I see it, I avert my eyes and cross quickly to the other side of the aisle.

I leave you with a big of doggerel that must have started making the rounds in the 1930's.

"Here's to the milk in the little red can.
The best milk in all the land.
No cow to milk,
No hay to pitch,
Just stick a knife in the --------
little red can."

Fall, 1939

Tests have been administered and final grades assigned. Movement up the stairway of formal education has been granted or denied. Shouts of joy or groans of frustration have been visited upon myriad students -- and parents. Graduation announcements have been sent, gifts and cards purchased, ceremonies attended. Those so inclined and financially able to do so are in the throes of preparation to enter an institution of higher learning in a couple of months, most with excitement, some with trepidation. Others wonder and worry about where in the world they are going to find jobs.

The bright yellow buses are stilled, housed in huge warehouses for repairs and maintenance. Neighborhood streets are full of children on skateboards, bikes, motorized scooters and (gasp) afoot! The local recreation center swimming pool is open for business. Basketball goals have been dragged from behind garages to the edges of driveways and makeshift teams of players take turns trying to make baskets and stay out of the way of sometimes impatient motorists. Boom-boxes play on carports and in back yards until the curfew hour, with an occasional passing motorized juke-box breaking the stillness of the night.

All this school-related activity called to mind my first foray into the public (U.S. style) education system. The year was 1939. In September of that year I had reached an age sufficient to admit me to kindergarten in El Paso, Texas. We lived just far enough away from the school that my mother decided that I should ride the city bus from our one-room apartment to the school each morning, although I would be allowed to walk home after school. I think that she knew that my curiosity sometimes caused my attention to wander, and being a little late getting back home in the afternoon was preferable to being late to school.

She and I rode the city bus to the school when I went to be enrolled. During the trip, Mother went over and over the procedures for paying the bus fare, appropriate behavior while on the bus, and where to get off --- and so on and so on. She accompanied me to my classroom, where I met the teacher and obtained a list of supplies needed (tablet and pencil was about it, as I recall). Then we walked from the school back to the apartment, with Mother going over and over the exact route I was to take, stopping at cross-streets, looking both ways, etc., etc.

The next morning, I caught the bus at the nearby corner, sat up like a big girl, minded my manners, and got off the bus in front of the school. The red-brick school building had one story raised about eight to ten feet above the lot, and a large, partially below ground-level basement. About a dozen big steps (at least they looked that way to a five year old) led from the front walk upwards to the main floor.

With tablet and pencil and (probably) lunch box in hand, I started up the steps to begin my first day in school. I was so excited! However, standing about half-way up the steps was a huge boy (must have been a sixth-grade student) who challenged me, in fact, barred my way with outspread arms and said in a loud voice"You can't come in here!" I think I tried to get past him; after all, I had to go to school! But, try as I might, he continued to forbid my entrance!!! So...

...I turned around and walked home.

That my mother was astonished to see me is an understatement. When I told her what had happened, we got on the bus and went to school again. It was then that I learned that kindergarten was down the steps at the side of the building. Only big kids got to go up the steps onto the main floor. After explaining to the teacher why I was tardy on my first day, Mother went back home to care for my two siblings who had been left in the charge of the landlady.

I don't remember anything else at all about my first day of school, but there are other things that I do remember about that school year, and those, perhaps, will be other stories. I might even write about why, to this day, I can't stand the taste nor smell of Pet Brand evaporated milk.