So you think you have it bad ?

Naw, you just think they've disappeared -- it's all in yer mind . . .

No No they all came back
and I sent them out to get a bottle of milk,
and it's been two years.

You still have milk in bottles?
I miss bottles of milk.

Algis, It's very evident to most of us that we no longer have bottled milk in the US. So what country do you live in? c.i.

We get bottled milk now, plastic bottles, shaped exactly as the glass ones once were--although, of course, very thin-walled. As a child, i would take 2 cents to school each day, and received a half-pint bottle of milk and a straw. My grandmother, who gave me my 2 pennies each morning, never failed to complain of such a blantant example of price gouging. Later, the complaints had, apparently, multiplied, because we would take 3 pennies to school, every other day, and get a half-pint of milk each day . . .

Re: So you think you have it bad ?


EL OH EL!

*Oh, speaking of missing milk bottles, I do
miss the milkman... coming every 3 days or
so - you could also order cottage cheese
or cream, orange juice, or a number of other
dairy products. And we had those old
insulated metal boxes on front porches,
left with a slip of paper in the box - for
what you wanted to order
*When I was in the hospital in San Miguel
de Allende, in Guanajuato, Mexico last year
in October (for 10 days!) - I noticed that
they stilll use those old glass IV bottles &
there are no such things as IV pumps. The
nurse sets the flow rate with her watch.
*They also still sell the old version of the VW
beetle there, and it seems in many places,
likely 3rd world countries. Costs about $6,000
for a brand new one. Imagine. Of course you
can not bring it into the US. It does not meet
our "safety & emission control" standards.
Here, all these years I have thought that the
old bug, which I went through 2 of them during
my years in pharmacy school - was obsolete
and a thing of the past. Meanwhile it is still
being made, sold, driven with great regularity
in Mexico, and no doubt countless other
countries.

Real milk bottles had an enlargement at the top, just the right size to hold the cream as it separated out. Can't do that since they started homoginizing it.

At holiday times, my grandmother would get the metal milk cans from the milk train (my grandfather was station master), and use that for her holiday needs--cream and freshly churned butter. She would take the cap off the milk can, and, taking a large bowl, expertly flip the cream out without adding any milk. The cream would sit, holding the shape of the neck of the can--we small children would stare intently as it slowly, oh so slowly lost it's shape, and finally formed a thick pool in the bowl. My grandmother would churn the milk (using an inexhaustible supply of small child labor), and make butter, which would go into molds. The skim milk left from the churning would be used in pumpkins pies, cakes and pancakes for breakfast (Yeah ! ! !). As the milk train came through our little town before sunrise--most of this was accomplished before a "late" breakfast at about 8:00 a.m. . . .

With milk bottles around, one has to be watchful of who uses it first. They might be a decreamer.

Which, of course algis, is probably why we no longer have glass milk bottles with the cream on top in this part of the world. Nobody likes a decreamer.

friends and imaginary milk
Algis. Take your medication with real milk and your imaginary friends will stay away.

but, Algis, I hope that will not diminish the high quality of your photoart

I used to have an imaginary friend too, his name was ghosty. Must have run off to China and stayed there for goo... I miss him.

1.) I get milk in bottles. They charge a buck deposit, but that's how they sell it...

2.) WE are your imaginary friends.

I liked the milk that came in the bags, that was cool.

I much prefer milk the way I first was served...

Oh, yes. I keep searching!

what a great opportunity to post this...
Oh YEAH?

I've survived much worse than you would ever know.
Tigers, Dragons, reality fragmenting vortexes
I was an abandoned orphan with spotted skin of the worst colors,
My adopted parents beat me with sharp objects, cursing. I barely lived.
I crawled away one night after news that they had burned my brother and sisters to death. After my escape I was forced out of my country because a military regime took over, which had no tolerance for my parents religion.
I had to travel across the widest ocean cramped in a space no bigger than your stomach.
I was starved thinner than holocaust victims. On that voyage I caught every malady known to man, including gonorrhea, pancreatic cancer, and Crones disease.
My only friend, a rabid pet rat named Miles, was stepped on accidentally by a leper, whose leg came off, stuck hopelessly into my only friend.
After my arrival I got a job in Paris working as a night time sewer vaccumer, and to pay the bills I worked as a prostitute during the day. I was only five years old.
They kidnapped me and took me to Italy where I was made me a Eunich and I sang castrato parts in the Italian opera until they grew tired of me and shipped me to Africa where I worked in a fish canning factory until I was fired.
They threw me to Cannibals who bled me and took one of my kidneys. They sold me on the black market, I ended up in slavery.
My master beat and raped me then sent me to war in his stead, and I fought in Vietnam, gunning down people who I thought may be innocent, watching my company get picked apart by stray shells.
Once I was taken by the enemy, and they tortured me for months with ropes and cruel drops of water (which I can no longer bear to look at), then sent me back with a pile of their **** in a paper bag to give to my lead officer.
After my return, I got hit by an exploding Grenade, lost a leg, and was taken to a hospital just out of the reaches of an atomic bomb testing site.
This caused me to contract leukemia, and I was bitten by a deadly Tahitian snake which had escaped from a local Zoo, causing them to amputate my other leg. They didn't have advanced medicine, and the leg got gangrene and flesh eating disease, and they continued to have to amputate up into my body.
Over my stay, I gradually fell in love with one of the nurses, and on the day we were to be married I caught her in bed with a morbidly obese chicken pox patient named Larry. We had already signed a prenuptial agreement and she left with all the money I had ever earned.
I found a note saying we had had children together, but she had kept them hidden from me and killed them when they were toddlers.
I was falsely convicted of this horrendous crime, and sentenced to twenty years of hard labor then execution in this prison for triple homicide, in the electric chair.
You think you've got more problems than me? Maybe you do.


(M. Frost copyright 2003)