Chocolate Milk

This morning I poured myself a bowl of Cinnamon Life and reached into the refrigerator for the milk. I saw a half-gallon jug of whole milk bought for some holiday baking. That's been in there a while, I thought. Better check the date. It was dated 12/22. Okay, that'll need go out today. Then I checked our gallon of 1% and found it also dated 12/22. Gotta get some while I'm out and about, I thought, and then a funny memory popped into my mind.

During my last two years of high school and the first couple years of college, one of my best friends was Mike Tweed, the youngish Methodist minister--maybe 32 or so--at the church in Walnut. He sang and played guitar a little bit. His wife played piano. The two of them and my aunt and mom and I often sang together at church--Dallas Holm songs mostly. In addition to the singing, we also played a lot of basketball together and just generally had a laugh a minute.

One morning roughly 30 years ago, Mike and I were booked to sing at a 7:30 meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at AC Reynolds high school near Asheville. To make this easy, I spent the night at Mike's. I was up and around early and decided to fix some breakfast. I don't remember what I had to eat--Pop Tarts, probably. But to drink, I fixed chocolate milk, which is what I drank every morning. I poured a glass from the carton in the refrigerator and then dumped in a couple of heaping spoons of the old Nestle's Quik chocolate powder that came from the squarish boxes with the pop-off metal lid.

Mike and I left the house in good shape and headed for the school. But on the way, I began to feel sick at my stomach. Before I knew it Mike was rolling the car to a quick stop on the side of the road, and I opened my door and threw up.

What's funny about this? I told Mike that I thought his Nestle's Quik had gone bad. I can't tell you how much he laughed at this. And later his wife laughed at this too. The Quik hadn't gone bad, of course, but the milk had. That fact would have been the first thing to occur to most folks. But with all the milk-drinking and cooking that went on around my house, any given container of milk had never stayed around long enough to go bad. As a result, I never knew that milk could go bad!

By the way, once the sour milk was off my stomach, Mike and I went on to the high school, where we sang our Dallas Holm songs as scheduled.

I don't think Nestle's still makes the old powder any more--or maybe I just haven't looked. But while I'm out today to pick up a couple of final Christmas items, I'll pick up some milk. And I'll check the date, as I've done lo these many years.