Condensed memories never hurt anyone, they’re tasty and healthy
Today, birthday parties for the recently deceased are over, so to speak, but condensed milk is back with a vengeance (who knows what’s lurking in the C8 inbox? Every morning is a mystery).
Andrew Macintosh, of Cromer, recalls: “When rationing was given during the war, my mother would give each of our three boys a tin of condensed milk as a Christmas present. We poked two holes in them and sucked out the elixir, which is heaven. I’m still doing it at 87.”
A few years later John Crowe of Cherrybrook says: “We were living on the Atherton Plateau at the end of the war and I used to visit the timber cutters’ camps in the school holidays. Billy tea made over an open fire, sweetened with condensed milk. Bliss.” Too much condensed milk over the years certainly doesn’t seem to have done any harm to these two gentlemen.
Alison Stewart of Waitara adds: “Suckling the contents of a tin of condensed milk was a favorite among boarders at my school in the 1950s, especially after a free weekend away from school. Shopping was done off-site.”
Then Elizabeth Savage from Hughes in ACT steps in with a more feminine version. “I have happy childhood memories of condensed milk. I too would occasionally enjoy a can of condensed milk, but as a more refined girl I would eat mine with a teaspoon, not sucked through a hole. It was wonderfully sweet and ‘good for you’ because it was milk. Virtue and satisfaction went hand in hand.” Full Column 8 result Elizabeth.
“Many years ago, I came across displays of Carnation milk from Australia in stores in Lima, Peru,” recalls John Walter from Atlanta, Georgia. “There is no dairy industry in Peru, so all dairy products are imported.” So, not only C8 writers are very common, but also condensed milk; who knew?
Going back to manual telephone switchboards for a moment, another claim to be the last one, thank God, is Wollstonecraft’s Craig Lilienthal, who tells the story of being a young GP in West Wyalong in the 1970s and I walked into the switchboard at Ungarie, urgently needing to speak to the Ungarie doctor. Even though the lady at the Ungarie switchboard was my patient, It took me a while to do it.” find out from him where his local doctors are and with whom.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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