By Dick Brooks
For Capital Region Independent Media
It hit me in the supermarket the other day — no, it wasn’t the cart piled high with baked goods being propelled by a large lady obviously on a mission. She barely grazed me as I stood staring at the dairy products. Nope, what hit me was the realization that one of the biggest wastes of my time was the time spent each day making choices.
The visit to the market was brought about by a simple request: “Would you pick up some milk while you’re out?” Not difficult, I didn’t even need to write it down.
On the journey to accomplish my task, I flashed back to my long-ago youth. I was the milk-getter then, too. It involved taking the tin bucket with the tight-fitting top and walking about a mile down a dirt road to the neighbor’s, getting it filled from the bulk milk tank and returning home. Depending on the time I arrived, sometimes it was still warm and sometimes very creamy if it hadn’t been stirred recently.
It was a pleasant duty and I enjoyed swinging the pail as I walked, kicking up puffs of dust. The only time I didn’t particularly care for the job was in the late fall. Sometimes I’d go after supper and walking in the gathering darkness with the dry leaves skittering across the road was kind of spooky.
The Barney boys, big boys, who lived near us had taught me all about milking when we had moved to the country after having lived in town for a few years. They showed me how to milk cows. Donald had me pump the cow’s tail up and down while Andy, who was innocently leaning on the far side of the cow, squeezed her teat, squirting milk each time I pumped. I was so proud of knowing how to pump the milk out of a cow at the ripe old age of six that I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my mom. Country fun!
But back to the present. Get in, get the milk and get out. A quick and decisive mission.
Next time you’re in the market, look at the dairy case—no, really look at it! It’s filled with more choices than dairy products. There are all the “percentage” milks—1%, 2%, 0% and 100%. There are the flavored milks, chocolate and strawberry. There are container sizes ranging from single serving size up to the “how many kids do you have?” size. The containers are either plastic or cardboard.
There’s different animal milks—goat, sheep, yak… yak? There’s milk for folks who are allergic to milk. There’s a whole host of non-dairy dairy products (I’m still trying to figure that one out).
Then there are the vegetable milks, most of them soy or nut based. As I said before, I learned to milk a cow at an early age but I’ll be darned if I can figure out how you milk a bean plant. Do they have really little milking machines? I can just picture a large verdant pasture, filled with potted soy bean plants peacefully grazing. At milking time, the hired hands herd them into the milking parlor, placing each pot on a conveyor belt and attaching the tiny milking machine to one of its pods. When a plant has outlived its productive milk time, I suppose they are separated from the herd, sold to a local processing plant, butchered and sent out to the world in the form of tofu.
I finally figured out that the vitamin D milk was the old-fashioned kind I had been sent after, I decided on a middle-of-the-road sized container and returned to the castle to answer the questions I knew I’d face about the length of time taken to complete the task I was assigned.
Life was simpler before choices.
Thought for the week — “Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it’s up to the women to stomp the stuffing out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.” ~ Dave Barry
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Reach columnist Dick Brooks at whittle12124@yahoo.com.
