If you have ever seen a movie or a documentary about people shooting heroin into their arms, you’ve seen that dazed look come over their faces just before their eyes roll back in their sockets. That’s me on chocolate milk. I admit it – I have a bad chocolate milk jones.
It started back when men wearing starched white uniforms with snazzy white caps came driving up to my grandmother’s house in big delivery trucks. Granny always left a note between the swirly metal thing on the storm door with her list.
The milkman came to the door with her usual order, then read the note and added anything special she required- cottage cheese, extra butter, maybe, in the summertime, a pint of ice cream.
Ice cream is always nice, especially in an Alabama summer, but it was the cold, clear glass bottles in the metal carrier that always got my attention. It was my job, when school was out, to watch for the milkman in order to convey the delivery as quickly as possible to the round topped Frigidaire refrigerator in her kitchen. That refrigerator was there for as long as I can remember, and it was still working when she passed away, humming along as if nothing had changed, when in fact, everything had…
But on those humid mornings back in the early 60s, the only thing on my mind was getting a swig of that heavenly chocolate concoction.
Those glass bottles with the slim neck and paper caps kept milk colder than the plastic we’ve grown accustomed to today. That milk was so cold it almost gave you a brain freeze the same as ice cream, but in a totally good way.
I would dutifully put away Granny’s other offerings from the milkman, saving the chocolate milk until last. If I was lucky, she was already in the garden out back, hoeing and weeding as fast as possible to beat the noon heat. That being the case, I would peel back the top with the best of intentions. I’d just take a tiny sip, not enough for her to notice, why, the level in the bottle would hardly move.
Right…
Here comes the head back, eye-rolling part, sign of a true addict. That first swallow hit the back of my throat with a jolt and there was no stopping now, I was past the point of no return…
There are no words to describe that chocolate rush, that sweet, velvety sensation that put every single taste bud on high alert.
After finally coming up for air, the bottle would be half-empty, and I would be standing there like a wino in a back alley, in the soft glow of the refrigerator light wearing a chocolate mustache of epic proportions.
What’s a little girl to do? Rather than tell a lie about it, I figured out a way to compensate. I opened the regular milk, which people called ‘sweet milk’ back then, and poured three or four ounces into the chocolate container. No one ever minded if you drank the white variety, it was just the chocolate milk that was doled out in miserly portions for sweeping the porch, shelling butterbeans or hauling out the garbage.
If you shake the two together, the chocolate eventually absorbs the lighter color, making the chocolate just a little bit weaker, but grown-ups just thought that it was the milk company watering it down. If you got the cap to fit back just perfectly, your transgression was unnoticeable. Most of the time.
Thus began years of chocolate milk addiction. Had he known, Willy Wonka would have certainly made me the president of his fan club.
When I started elementary school, I was overjoyed to learn that for break we could have for the paltry sum of six cents, a pint of chocolate milk and one piece of white loaf bread. Now I could even partake at school! I was a happy camper!
When I reached puberty it seemed to go into remission, with only occasional binges that grew few and further between, until finally, I pretty much conquered my craving.
However, last week I fell off the wagon. Fell hard. There I was, once again, standing in the glow of a different, LED refrigerator light, giving myself over to a similar seductive flavor, not quite the drink of choice in 1962, but close. Nothing will ever be as good as chocolate milk in an ice cold glass bottle, but it was awfully close…
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