The Cottage Cheese Incident

A Recollection

By

Terry Le Feber

We all remember those evening dinners with our parents and siblings around the old kitchen table. 

Do you remember the kitchen table with the pull out leaves, swirled marble Formica top, chrome legs, enameled base with the single silverware drawer?  And how about those classy chrome plated chairs with matching vinyl upholstery?

Of course, you do.

Do you remember all the wonderful home cooked meals before frozen foods, Mc Donald’s, and Chicken Delight?  And, can you remember that some of those foods were not too appealing to youngsters-- like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, fried parsnip (Dad liked his parsnips burnt black with the taste of cardboard) and, of course, my personal favorite: cottage cheese?

Cottage cheese-- that curdled, lumpy, slimy, off-white, yellowing, oozing mess created by bacteria attacking soured cow’s milk.  Everyone knows bacteria sours milk when left too long in the sun or refrigerator.  So, why would anyone, let alone my mother, force two young boys to daily indulge in eating contaminated food; food that could only make you sick, or worse, cause you to suffer a long, lingering, painful, gut- wrenching death? 

Why you ask? 

“Because it is good for you,” was Mom’s standard answer. 

My brother Rick and I could never understand how eating so many vile tasting foods “could be good for us.”  We later learned another expression that explained all this.

  “No pain, no gain.”  What pain?  What gain?  We’re still trying to find the answer to that one.

But, my parents’ personal best was when either of us balked at eating something we hated, they would proclaim, “Millions are starving in Asia. Don’t be wasteful.  Eat!” 

How was eating vile or contaminated food going to help millions of starving Asians?  We never used that psychology in later life on any of our sons, who, early on, all discovered a liking for macaroni and cheese.

But one day, at the tender age of 8, I stood my ground.

I had eaten everything off my plate; leaving it gleaming and shiny, save for one spot.  A spot occupied by an overly generous scoop of yellowing, oozing, stinking cottage cheese.

Rick was done; having accidently dropped his spoonful of the lumpy gore onto the floor. He beat me to the punch that time.

Mother proclaimed, for the millionth time, “Eat your cottage cheese. There are millions starving in Asia!”

While silently cursing all Asians, whoever and where ever they were, I bravely proclaimed, “No. I am not going to eat this cottage cheese now or ever.”

My father, sitting to my left, quietly asked, “What did you just say to your mother?”

Proudly and stupidly, I repeated my statement to good old Dad.

BAM!

I never saw it coming.  His right hand, palm flattened, landed squarely on the back of my head, forcing my face into the simmering, hideous, stinking pile of goo!

Screaming, I ran into the adjacent lavatory, and through tear- clouded eyes saw myself in the mirror.

It wasn’t pretty.  There I stood, in mental and physical anguish, looking into the face of a stranger.  A stranger with a face covered in wretched, fermenting, bacteria -laden cottage cheese. It was a face that looked like a circus clown covered in pancake makeup.

Well, that was over sixty years ago.

I have since learned to eat, and like, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and, of all things, cottage cheese.  Parsnips still have not been voted upon.

Then there was the time Mom lifted the lid off the two quarts full of green string beans and there lay a steamed dead housefly belly up………………but that is another story.

Afterword:  This occurred at a time when families were closely knit units, scouting, church, God and Country represented the core values of America, and children did not ‘sass’ parents, elders, relatives, teachers, police, clergy, or even government officials. My, how times have changed.