Column: Got Milk

column-got-milk

Dear readers,

To quote Roseanne Roseannadanna, “it’s always something.”  This week it’s milk.

For those of you who aren’t well versed in 1970s pop culture, Roseanne Roseannadanna was a character played by the late, great Gilda Radner on the TV show Saturday Night Live. A time in history when the show was actually funny.

My problem with milk started this week when I had a meeting at the State Office Building in downtown Indianapolis. I always arrive early to find a parking space. I then make my way to the cafeteria in the basement of the building for breakfast. In past years, the cafeteria always featured a giant pot of oatmeal and a giant pot of cream of wheat simmering on the stove. I noticed that cream of wheat was no longer offered, but the oatmeal was just as I remembered. 

I stirred the oatmeal and ladled up a large portion in a bowl. After topping it off with a few raisins, I looked around for the milk. The last time I ate in the cafeteria there was a nice selection of half pints of milk. All the favorites were available, including whole, two percent, one percent, skim, chocolate, and low-fat chocolate. I didn’t see any milk at all.

Thinking that the milk must have been moved to a new location, I asked one of the cafeteria workers. Nope, the milk wasn’t moved to a new location. Milk just isn’t offered as a beverage choice any longer.

I was shocked. Indiana is the heartland of America. Not only do Hoosier children all sport milk mustaches, so does the winner of the Indy 500. 

Milk was the beverage of choice by iconic Hoosier actor James Dean. Dean even drank milk when playing Jim Stark in the movie “Rebel Without a Cause.” Of course, as a rebel, he didn’t pour it in a glass, but drank the milk directly from the bottle.

I couldn’t believe among all the soft drink selections, there was no room to also offer milk for sale. Besides, I really believed all the dairy advertisements from the past, “Milk, it does a body good!” or “it builds strong bodies twelve ways.” 

Real and TV moms always said, “finish your milk.”

Wait a minute, my wife Sandy says, “it builds strong bodies twelve ways,” is from a Wonder Bread commercial. Ok, so maybe I’m wrong about that example, but Jimmie Dean drank milk. Milk should be available in the government cafeteria. 

The cafeteria is also frequented by statehouse employees who have convenient access by way of a tunnel. I don’t know who made the decision to stop serving milk but I’m certain they didn’t get approval from our State Senator Jean Leising.

In 2012, when Senator Leising found out that our schools no longer were teaching cursive writing, she famously said, “I still have a pad of yellow Sticky Notes, and if I write out something neatly in cursive, I expect an intern at the Senate to be able to read it.” 

I’m guessing that Senator Leising also expects Senate interns to have milk as a choice when eating in the cafeteria. A carton of milk with their meal would be good for the health of the intern and promote Indiana’s dairy farmers.

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.