Buying Bread and
Milk is All in Your Head!
I'm writing this with three of
an expected six inches of snow piling up on the ground outside my office window.
Forty-five years past and a few hundred miles north from where I now sit, this would have been considered an average snowfall on an average winter day. It might have slowed us down a bit as we brushed and scraped it off our cars and from our paths, but life would have gone on largely unaffected.
Located as I am now along the 36th parallel, it is cause for widespread panic. Not as
widespread, perhaps, as it was a few years ago when I lived even
deeper in the Deep South. There an inch or two of snow caused a
reaction that bordered on insanity. Schools closed days in advance
and virtual martial law-like scenarios were implemented. Once a
“state of emergency” was declared, you were subject to arrest and
fine if you were found frivolously driving around town on one or two
inches of snow. Yes, I'm serious. My mind still reels when I recall
the time “snow” – i.e. one to three inches – was predicted on
a Monday evening, scheduled to arrive on Thursday morning. They
started closing the schools on TUESDAY! The
city spent Wednesday in full panic mode and when Thursday arrived, it just rained. And there wasn't a loaf of bread or a half-pint of milk to be
found anywhere within a hundred-mile radius.
Which brings me to
my point: Why? What in the name of rational thinking are people going
to do with all that bread and milk?
When I was a
broadcaster, I used to joke that whenever the local Kroger or Piggly
Wiggly had a surplus of bread or milk, they would call the radio and
TV stations and ask us to say “snow” on the air. Didn't matter if
it was the middle of July. That simple four-letter word would have
the power to strip the shelves of any and all stock and overstock. In
the South, it's a Pavlovian response. You hear the word “snow”
and you are compelled to run to the nearest grocery or convenience
store and buy all the bread and milk there is to be had.
Hey, even native
Southerners laugh at it. But nine out of ten of them still do it,
even though they can't explain for the life of them why they do it. It
is literally a conditioned response, handed down through the
generations. It doesn't have to make sense. It's just what you do.
After years of
head-scratching, I decided to do a little research on the phenomenon.
Here's what a psycho-doodler I read posited as a theory. According to
this learned individual, buying bread and milk represents a form of
control. The theory goes that when a storm threatens, if you buy
something substantial and sensible, like canned food or dried beans
or something, you are expecting the worst and surrendering your
control of the situation. If, on the other hand, you buy something
totally impractical, like bread and milk, you are secretly telling
yourself that everything will be alright and that you will remain in
control of your circumstances for the short term. There. All figured
out. See? Wasn't that easy? The binge buying of bread and milk is all
in your head. The crisis isn't real and with a little therapy you
could be cured.
Now, I do have to
question this scholar's credibility a bit because, A.) she lives in
Los Angeles where nary a flake of snow has ever fallen and B.) rather
than objectify Southerners in specific, she chose to include
Mid-westerners in her proposition. As one who spent the first twenty or so years of his life in the Upper Midwest, I can assure you that at no
time did I ever see my mother, father, grandparents, aunts, uncles,
friends or neighbors rush off to pillage a supermarket at the drop of
a snowflake. Had they done so, they might as well have just taken up
residence in the store's stock room, because when and where I was a kid it
started snowing at Halloween and didn't stop until Easter.
I read several other psychological evaluations that all centered on people's desire to "meet basic needs" in case of an emergency. Okay. Whatever. If an inch of snow in an area where winter's worse temperatures barely touch the freezing mark for more than a few hours at a time constitutes an "emergency," so be it.
I read one brainiac who suggested that the whole "bread and milk" thing didn't start in the South at all but was a New England phenomenon that began after the Great Blizzard of 1978 when people were trapped in their homes for weeks following the fierce, paralyzing storm. Okay. I remember that storm. In fact, it was the impetus for moving my frozen Midwestern butt south of the Mason-Dixon line the following year. But I also remember that my sister had already been living in the South for nearly a decade by then and was completely mystified by the lack of bread and milk in stores every time a snowflake fell. And besides, right after I read that article I saw another one that said the whole rigmarole started after a big storm in 1950. Which would be given the lie by people I've talked to who recall empty store shelves prior to snows several years earlier than that.
A friend of mine, a woman with no vaunted psychological background and no letters after her name, theorizes that the tradition started back in the days when bread and milk were delivered to the home by route deliverymen. Obviously even a smattering of snow had the potential to disrupt these vital deliveries, so people took things into their own hands and hit the stores ahead of potential bad weather to insure their supply of essentials. And even though I personally have not seen hide nor hair of a milkman in more than a half-century, the thought process is that people stockpile today simply because that's the way ma and pa and the grandparents all did it.
Not that I'm saying
a little preparation is a bad thing. But, for Pete's sake, use some
common sense. In the first place, you're in the South, okay?
IF.....and that's a big “if”.......any measurable snow
actually materializes after the weather guessers spend a week scaring the beejeebers
out of you, how long will it actually last? A day? Two? You're in Burlington, North Carolina, you know, not Burlington, Vermont. And then what
do you do with all that bread and milk? Get together with your
equally overstocked neighbors and have the world's biggest bread
pudding party?
Which further leads me to
ask, why do you have to buy all the bread and milk in sight? I
mean, come on. Jesus fed the multitudes with five loaves of bread and
a couple of fish. Is there a reason a family of four needs sixteen
gallons of milk and thirty-two loaves of bread to last for the next
day or two? As I write this in January, there are people in New
England who will likely not see the ground again until July. Surely folks
in Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, and Charleston can survive on what's in the
pantry for a couple of days without having to denude the store
shelves of superfluous goods.
Yes, I said
superfluous goods. Bread and milk are rotten choices for emergency
provisions. Milk requires refrigeration which requires electricity.
Unless, of course, you plan to stick it all out in the snow. And
nutritionally speaking, you're not getting much bang for your buck
out of loaves of gummy, store-bought white bread. What's on your
emergency menu, bread sandwiches? Why don't you raid the peanut
butter aisle while you're at it. At least that way you'd have
something nutritious and non-perishable on which to survive for those
grueling thirty-six hours of snowy captivity. And instead of gallons and gallons of
liquid moo juice, why not fill up the old pickup truck bed with cases
of powdered milk? Yeah, I know it tastes lousy but it's
non-perishable and it will still be good when the next two-inch
blizzard strikes a couple of years from now.
I know you just
want to panic when the power goes out and takes the electric stove
with it, but do you realize how easy it is to cook up a pot of
Campbell's soup over a can of Sterno? Why not grab some of those
instead of all that bread and milk? Or canned fruit. Or packaged
nuts. Or granola bars, for cryin' out loud. Something you can
actually live on for a day or two. I saw a picture online of some
guys lining up with beer and chips. Great idea if you like warm beer.
No power, remember? Again, I guess you could just slip some Buds into a
snowbank, but really........
Old habits die
hard, and that's really all it is. There's no logical reason
whatsoever for terrorizing grocery store clerks and herniating bread
and milk deliverymen other than the fact that your mama did it and
your grandmama did it and your great-grandmama did it, and so on. Don't you think it's time to break the cycle? Get therapy if you need to, but stop
the bread and milk madness!
I gotta go now. My
wife just got home with groceries......including a rare and priceless gallon of
milk......and I've got to put a loaf of bread in the oven.
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