Days of wine and powdered milk

Reflecting on my 92-year life span, it’s an uphill battle, and I feel fortunate to have made it this far. Checking the daily obituary column each day, it seems the woman’s life span is longer than a man’s.

We could not afford whole or canned milk during the Depression, so it was my job to go to our East Side’s Clover Leaf Dairy, several blocks away to get skim milk, which then cost about 5 cents per gallon. I believe skim milk was given to hogs.

We brought our own gallon glass containers to haul the milk. I haven’t had whole milk in almost 40 years due to lactose intolerance.

I went to Italy on vacation in 1977 to visit a cousin, and he had heard that we Americans drank a lot of whole milk, so he bought a lot of powdered milk for me. We had powdered milk on our ship in World War II, which I never drank. I didn’t drink his powdered milk, either.

My mother often related to me a story about her grand- father who lived with her family at a time when he was ill and had a visit from the village doctor.

My great-grandpa was not too happy with the diagnosis since the doctor told 84-year-old Felice Antonio, “You can no longer drink wine.” He told the doctor “No way will I quit drinking my wine. I was weaned off of my mother’s milk when I was a baby, now you want to wean me off of my wine, I may as well die.”

The next day he died.

Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree and member of the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame and the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame.