"It Doesn't Matter How Poor You Are, Nobody Wants To Drink Hot Milk," A Story From My Grandfather (With An Additional Argument In Favor Of Liverwurst)
Yea yea I know. It's a lot to take in. My Grandpa was poor? Hot milk? Liverwurst? These are all signs that I spent the day with my grandparents on Saturday.
I originally took this video to send to my parents and I ended up tweeting it. I love my grandparents. They're funny and honest and they're so grateful to have lived life and to be happy and healthy. It makes you feel good about "being alive," if that makes sense. They're both in their 80s and they just chill down on Long Beach Island with wine and good food all day long. I wanted to tell this story because while my Grandpa was telling it, I felt lucky to be listening to it. Grandparent stories are always mostly pointless, but somehow the best stories ever. My Grandpa should start a podcast of just him telling stories exactly like this one.
Sidenote, my Nana likes to make a production out of meals, she loves to make it a presentation. At their house its breakfast, lunch, nibbles, dinner and dessert. Constant stream of snacks. Lunch is always sandwiches, cold cuts and fixins (this weekend we also had probably the best coleslaw I've ever tasted.) My personal favorite, and hers, is Liverwurst. YES, LIVERWURST. With a little bit of onion, sometimes sweet pickles, and sweet mustard. A mouth watering sandwich, undisputedly. I think you're trash if you don't like it. Or you just don't like any of the fancy pate appetizers at nice restaurants. You gonna try and tell me that the Chicken Liver Pate at Charlie Bird is BAD? It tastes exactly like a liverwurst sandwich, and it costs 25 bucks a spoonful.
ANYWAY. I only mentioned the sandwiches because as you can see, my Nana laid out the slices on a lovely patterned paper plate for us to all easily make our sandwiches, and I didn't want anyone mistaking it for bologna (which is also delicious.) While we were eating, my grandpa started telling a story from when he was in grade school. He was born two years after the Great Depression ended, so he always tells us how he grew up poor and couldn't afford food and clothes, literally. He went to Catholic school, as all good Irish boys in Newark, NJ do, and they had the option of having milk with their lunch. It would cost 4 cents.
My Grandpa never bought the milk. Knowing that he was poor, one of the nuns came up to him one day and offered to buy him some milk. Which, in itself, a nun in a school those days showing any kind of compassion to a kid is basically unheard of. My Grandpa refused the offering, the nun was confused. He then told her that he wasn't buying the milk, not because he couldn't afford it, but because when they wheeled it into the schoolroom every morning, they would store it next to the radiator. So the milk would sit there for half a day curdling and would be hot and repulsive by lunchtime. Lucky for my Grandpa, the nun laughed. (Still didn't move the milk though.)
"I probably needed the milk, but nobody wants to drink hot milk. Who would do that? It has to be ice cold." - Bill Keegan
There you have it. That's the whole story. Wise words. And an interesting message, that tells us all it doesn't matter where you come from or where you're going. If you're picky about something, you're going to be picky about it for your entire life. You might not even be eating dinner tonight because you can't afford it, and an extra carton of milk will help satiate your hunger. It's hot milk? No dice. Your bones may be as brittle as ever. You'd rather die of starvation than ask the nuns to NOT store the milk next to the radiator, so you can have some non-spoiled milk. You shove it all down and suffer in silence. Who needs milk anyway? Certainly not my Grandpa.
That's it! Cool story! Crazy that a carton of milk only cost 4 cents, huh? Imagine anything costing 4 cents? I'm so rich in cents right now I'd have a lifetime supply of milk.
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Say one bad thing about my Grandparents, I will find you, and I will k*ll you.