MILK

4311 Linton Avenue, built in 1908. This is the flat in the Fairground Neighborhood in North St. Louis where my father grew up. He lived here with his grandmother, Lena Depander, this father Edward Oberlin, his mother Gretchen Depander, Gretchen's younger sister Bertha, and his older sister Thelma. Flats like these began to spring up in the late 1800s and were home to many of the German immigrants of St. Louis. The two front doors provide entry to the separate dwellings one on the ground floor and one on the second story. Each flat was just a little more than 1,000 square feet and like many of these dwellings were "cold-water," which meant water had to be heated for bathing and laundry.

During the Depression, my grandfather Edward Oberlin managed to purchase a female goat that was kept in the small, fenced-in yard behind the family's flat. Apparently, there were no ordinances against keeping farm/domesticated animals inside St. Louis city limits. The nanny goat was treated like a pet and became a part of my father's and his friends' play. Fortunately, the goat provided milk for the family and for this reason, survived butchering, the fate of many animals at that time. When meat was scare, as it often was, horse meat could be on the menu, but people often just went hungry. Foods we take for granted today, were considered exotic then. For example, as a child, my mother rejoiced whenever she contracted the flu because this was the only occasion she was offered an orange, fresh fruit being a rarity. When she was about eight years old, her mother spanked her for food theft. Mom had eaten an entire jar of her neighbor's mayonnaise left on the doorstep by the diary deliveryman and had to run home where she succumbed to a horrible bout of vomiting, which led to the discovery of her mayo heist. Mom chuckled as she explained that the mayonnaise tasted so good going down she couldn't stop eating it until it was entirely gone and despite the spanking and getting sick she never regretted eating it. "I only regretted I wasn't able to steal a loaf of bread to go with the mayo," she scoffed.