Drink your damned milk.

At least three full glasses a day. Nearly every evening at dinner, I left my milk sit next to my plate without even lifting the glass to my lips, hoping no one would notice and allow me to be excused from the table. (We were required to ask: "May I please be excused?") My frustrated mother who as a poor, Depression-era child that rarely had such treats and simply could not understand why I didn't chug-a-lug the nasty stuff down, would throw up her hands and yell, "No! You are not excused. Drink your damned milk or sit there at the table until you do!" Did that mean I was expected to grow old at our kitchen table? I envisioned my grandmother with her gray hair and funny-looking laced up black shoes sitting at the table with a glass of milk in front of her. How old was she? I wasn't sure but imagined about a hundred years old. Would I look like that someday? Ugh. Would I still be sitting at the table 100 years from now while my mother waited for me to finish a single glass of milk? I listened to the neighborhood kids laughing and hollering outdoors and stared down at the red and white linoleum squares of our kitchen floor to ponder how much fun I was missing. Clearing my mind of thought, I grabbed the glass and drank the stuff as quickly as possible while trying not to projectile vomit it across the table. "Done!" I yelled and flew out the back door to join my friends.

Mom thought she was doing the right thing. She wanted her children to have all the things she did without and that especially included wholesome food. She understood nutrition by the way it was advertised. Wonder Bread "helps builds bodies in 12 ways." Consider those 12 possible ways: It is highly processed. It promotes obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. It contains preservatives. Consider the milk we drank in the 1950s: Milk builds bones and helps us grow! (Don't worry about the DDT in the milk.) Heck, no one knew much about DDT anyway. Yes, this post-WWII "magic" chemical was used to kill disease-carrying and crop-destroying pests, but alas, it benignly found its way into the little bodies of countless children. Until I reached the ripe-old age of sixteen, I was required to drink a glass of milk with my breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. In the summer, my brother, sister, and I were allowed a glass of lemonade only after we had finished our glass of milk. Unfortunately, after drinking milk, its chalky after-taste lingered and the lemonade never tasted very good. To this day, I hate milk.

In 1956, the food groups were rather basic: meat, dairy, cereals and grains, fruits and vegetables. Popular dishes served at dinner were beef stroganoff, meatloaf, and Salisbury steak (a hamburger pounded into a thin, flat pancake with brown gravy and canned mushrooms poured over it). Green Jello infused with shredded carrots counted as a salad. Morning cereals often found on the table were Frosted Flakes, Sugar Pops, Rice Krispies. Ice cream, margarine, sour cream, and coffee cream counted in the dairy category. For lunch, a bologna sandwich with mustard on white Wonder Bread and a thermos of Campbell's soup. Fancy holiday dishes graced the dining room table: sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows; canned green beans baked with canned cream of mushroom soup with canned fried onions on top; and a relish tray - pickles, olives, and celery sticks that no one touched. Some of my mother's favorite delicacies were Dinty Moore canned stew, olive loaf (which is a liquified bologna smashed into a loaf embedded with green olives), and Hormel corned beef hash. I know, I know, but God bless her. Remember, this woman nearly starved as a kid. However, I look at the food choices I had as a kid and better understand why I was so skinny. Most of this stuff tasted like dog food and I truly didn't care to eat much.