A DAY IN THE YOUNG LIFE....

Well, there's a throw back if I ever saw one. Does anyone out there in Face Book Land remember "Triple Milk?" This image is an Artificial Intelligence picture of the product I want, and not a very good one, I might add.

While tossing around ideas for Blogs, for some reason this product was on my brain. I'm pretty sure none of my children ever heard of it, but since Momma never could resist trying out a new product, we had to put up with this one too when we were the kids.

Now, to refresh everyone's mind, I did a little Google research and came up with this information.

ADL, which everyone knows as Amalgamated Dairies Ltd., was asked by CFB Summerside to come up with a milk product that was concentrated and easy to transport. The idea of a concentrated milk meant quite simply that one bag would take the place of three bags, hence, much less work to pack and transport. And this is going back to the 1950s and 1960s, probably before ADL was quite finished amalgamating all the Dairies. I believe The Souris Buttercup Dairy was one of the last independent dairies around. And they had it all, but I digress.......

Triple milk, as the name suggests, meant you could add water to reconstitute it. It saved money too, for obvious reasons. But on its own it could also be used for coffee cream or oatmeal or to add to a dessert, like a dish of strawberries, at full strength. Momma used it plenty, until she tired of the inconvenience. And really, whose bright idea was it anyway to put milk in bags? I mean, it came from a cow's bag, but still............

Then in 2008, it was discontinued altogether, due to slow sales. A lot of people had never even heard of it. But back in the day, it was a thing.

And speaking of things that are no longer available, does anyone remember "Chocolate Soldier?"

I hunted for an image, in my mind I can see it so clearly, but couldn't find one.

When we were in the new Rollo Bay School, these canned drinks became available for a dime or so, and they were delicious! I'm sure they were 100% sugar, but we were always hungry, and a can of this with your peanut butter sandwich just hit the spot. It was a can with a white label and whether there was a soldier on it or not, that's a moot point. But I think there was. They were available for a short time, they weren't around long, but Jamie remembers them too. That was a good day when you scored a can of "Chocolate Sugar." I mean, Soldier.

Poor Momma. One year she got Butch and me kitted out for our back to school time, in the one room school at Rollo Bay.

A few new rags to wear, a satchel, and for some reason I'll never forget the lunch boxes. I could never figure out how she managed it all.

We both had our own, with some super hero or Atom Ant or something on it, but it was the matching thermos that came with them that we were most excited about. They were glass lined of course, this was before plastic was in everything. It was my first experience with a thermos, we had no reason to have such a thing. I don't remember what was in the thermos, probably milk from Jackie Doucette's cows, but I sure remember being warned not to lose it, break it, or forget it at school.

Noted.

I would have been eight and Butch six, so we often walked home from school through Mahar's Woods. Even then, it seemed such a special place. No school buses yet.

We passed by neat piles of logs, which makes sense, since it was probably primarily a wood road.

On this fine day we decided to cut through the woods, and we climbed up on the pile, which no doubt was shifty and unsafe, but what did we know? We thought we were on top of the world!

Until we remembered some morsel of lunch that must have been left in our lunch box, so we proceeded to sit down and eat and drink what was left.

And low and behold, there was some milk sloshing around in our thermoses, it should have been churned into butter by now, but we knew it would still be cool enough to drink, so we carefully removed the top, which same as today, is the cup with that little handle for your index finger, and unscrewed the cap, which we carefully set down on the log beside us.

We enjoyed our little lunch and went to pack it all back up. We still hadn't lost the novelty of having our own cool lunch box set.

But as we stood up, the logs on top shifted, and we watched in horror as our screw on caps, both at the same time, disappeared forever down the middle of the pile, never to be seen again.

Jesus Christ. Momma was gonna kill us. I'm sure we looked and scratched around in disbelief, but we couldn't see them. And of course the thermoses were useless without them. Bad enough if we'd lost the cups, but it was the screw caps.

We were frigged. And if we came clean and admitted to where we lost them, she would have had a stroke if she ever found out we were playing on top of piled logs. We could have gotten killed. And we were perilously close to getting killed already.......god knows what story we told her. And by "we" I mean me, who was going to blame a little curly haired boy who was just following his older sister around?

Our schools today have become a safe place for kids and a place where good food on a regular basis has value. The students are offered such varied and tasty choices for breakfast, healthy and free to boot, it has to help produce the desired results of a student body that can focus on their work and learn. Not cringe every time their empty belly growls and they are ashamed someone might hear. Been there.

I remember clearly nearly dying from starvation on the bus ride home from High School where I figured even Lorne Dingwell up front could hear it.

And it seemed like such a long ride............

This was back in the day before granola bars, yogurt and nifty water bottles were the norm. That might have filled the hunger gap. But on second thoughts the 70s were also the years of Beef Eater Gin being sneaked onto school property in thermoses, so there was that...........not me of course, I valued my little French arse, but certain people that I knew.

We have grandkids in University, High School and College this year, and we're proud of them all. I trust they will have a good year. We also have a teacher in the family, at SRS, so hoping her year will be grand too.

What other memories of those early years lunch times do you have?