G
ot milk? You bet we have. More than six billion men, women and children drink that familiar white liquid produced from the glands of mammals every day on this planet.
We downed 720 million tonnes of the stuff last year and there’s no sign that our thirst is slaked.
And — aside from for those who are lactose intolerant — that’s a good thing. Human breast milk is tailor-made for tiny humans but milk products of all kinds are healthy and plentiful and we don’t just rely on two-legged mammals for our supply. We’ve guzzled our fill on milk from cattle, sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo — even horses, reindeer and camels.
As for how we get the milk from the gland to the customer, well, that’s changed a lot over the years too. I can remember when milk came to our doors in milk wagons hauled by patient, shuffling teams of horses. The one-quart bottles clinked and clanked as the wagon rolled along. Each bottle had a cardboard stopper and a tulip-shaped flare at the top, which is where an enterprising brat, if he tip-toed out on the porch early in the morning, could find the cream. Mmmmmm.
The horses were eventually retired and the milk wagons morphed into milk trucks which performed the same function. Then some bean counter worked it out that it would be more profitable to have the customers schlep to a store and pick up their own supply of milk. Adios, milk truck.
The containers changed as well. The quart glass bottles were retired in favour of clunky, rigid polyethylene jugs which in turn were replaced by soft plastic bags. After that came plasticized cartons in various sizes from quarter-pint (sorry, I’m a geezer) all the way up to a two-litre version. I think that’s how milk is sold in Canada these days, although I haven’t been down to the corner store for a while so there may be yet another incarnation.
I also haven’t been to downtown Pittsburgh, and that’s a pity, because there’s a milk delivery revolution going on down there. It’s a big old ice-cream van that’s been renovated. Each working day it winds through the streets of Pittsburgh with a giant pink fibreglass breast on top — complete with a rosy nipple that blinks.
It’s called The Milk Truck, natch. Its purpose: to make life a little easier for breast-feeding moms.
Inside, there’s a cozy lounge where mothers can find nursing supplies, breast pumps and a welcoming, non-hostile atmosphere. The crew, decked out in saucy milkmaid costumes, also respond to distress calls from nursing mothers in need of some privacy to pump breast milk during the workday.
The Milk Truck was the inspiration of Jill Miller, a Pittsburgh conceptual artist who created the idea as a commentary on attitudes to breast feeding in public, then discovered that the Milk Truck was filling a real need.
But not for everyone. Ms. Miller was astounded to find that a substantial portion of the public is actually offended by the sight of women nursing their babies.
“We think nobody cares,” she told a reporter from (really) Bust magazine, “but some people — predominantly women — are for some reason fully enraged by the thought of a woman feeding her baby in public.”
Call me a slavering pervert but I think the sight of a nursing mother and child is about as beautiful as life gets. Tim Horton’s customers lining up for their double-doubles wearing pajamas and hair curlers — that’s offensive. But I digress.
I’d love to see Pittsburgh’s Milk Truck rumbling down my street sporting a fibreglass breast with its nipple winking away.
And for any passerby who took offense? It would just prove that the real boob wasn’t on the truck.
Arthur Black is a regular columnist.
He lives on Salt Spring Island
