I remember clearly the day I quit liking milk and ice cream.
It was the spring of 1971 and I was going through the dinner line at East Oklahoma State College in Wilburton.
I got my usual glass of milk, sat down, ate a couple of bites,took a drink of milk and Bleeccchhh.
It felt like the milk left a film over my mouth and tongue and dern near gagged me. I had to go get a glass of pop to wash it out.
This was a defining moment in my life because I’d grown up drinking milk by the gallon, and I mean that literally.
My parents had a Jersey milk cow named Bossy when I was a kid. My mother, who had grown up on a dairy, would milk her in the mornings and my dad would milk her in the evenings.
They would pour the milk from the milk bucket into gallon jars, using an old pillow case to screen it. I didn’t know anything about the health dangers of such a process, so, of course, I never got sick from drinking the milk. And as far as I know, neither did the thousands of other country kids who did the same thing.
Bossy’s milk was half cream, it seemed. By the time the milk got cold, there would be a few inches of cream already on the top, just begging to be poured into a cup to accompany a left-over biscuit for an after-school snack.
Later, long after Bossy had moved on, we bought raw milk from a dairy owned by Gerloffs between Latta and Lightning Ridge. From birth to 18 years, I drank far more raw milk than pasteurized or homogenized.
Thus, this experience in the cafeteria was a surprise to me.
I tried milk again over the next few months, but had the same reaction each time. It was gaggy. So I quit drinking milk and eating anything that had a strong dairy aftertaste.
This included ice cream, which used to be my favorite dessert.
Every warm weather holiday, we’d make ice cream at family gatherings at Grandma Solomon’s house in Roff. The Solomons had a large family, so there might be upwards of 60 people there.
Typically, there would be six to eight freezers of ice cream, all crank operated and all cranked by teenaged boys eager to show how strong they were.
There was an ice dock in Roff in those days, so the family would buy a couple of blocks of ice and chip them into small pieces to feed the freezers.
Good stuff, but I went many a year without eating ice cream because of the gaggy dairy aftertaste. Sherbet I could eat, but not ice cream.
Fast forward to July 3, when my kids and grandkids came to the house.
Kindra made vanilla ice cream, so I thought: “I’ll try a taste, just to see what happens.”
Turns out, I liked it. A lot. She used a lot of heavy whipping cream and not as much milk, not as much sugar as usual, plus vanilla beans that had been soaked in a clear, grain-based distilled liquid.
It was so good, (Dr. Gupta, please avert your eyes) I had three bowls and seriously considered a fourth.
It was light and fluffy and not at all gaggy. My knees almost buckled.
And best of all, we used a sack of crushed ice and an electric freezer.
So, life has taken a sharp turn for the better. I doubt I will drink milk any time soon, but I may suggest making more vanilla ice cream.
Like maybe this weekend.