I hope the word ‘buttermilk’, as shared here, doesn’t need too much explanation because it’s important that everyone knows exactly what it is I am talking about when I say buttermilk can be quite a mess to clean up.

  As it happens, my mother was still learning how to drive our car when we moved from our home in town to a farm place in 1936.

Also about that time, I was developing distaste for certain kinds of milk: the gross canned kind from the grocery store, and the quart bottle kind delivered to our doorstep -- in my opinion, never with enough good-tasting cream on top.

Soon, to my surprise, I learned we were moving and I was told there would be a cow there to provide some ‘real milk’. Don’t ask me how or why that happened; I was only 4 or 5 years old, and parents don’t always tell their children everything.

Soon, my mother got the idea that if she pasted a picture of a smiley face on the outside bottom of a quart jar, I would be happy to drink it empty (every day). I was never as impressed as she expected, and she often nagged at me to “Look for the face”. My not being completely motivated contributed to the ‘buttermilk’ connection starting soon after, as we began making all our butter by shaking a container of rich cream until, to my amazement and very tired young arms, there would always appear tiny pale golden lumps in the container.

My mother would take over at that point and I was never quite sure what was happening, except in a day or two we would get into our car and go see Aunt Mary in town.

On the car’s floor between my feet would always be a quart-size crock jar of liquid looking much like what I had been shaking earlier, only now it was called ‘buttermilk’. When offered a taste once, I was sure it was not going to be a rousing favorite of mine, but mother said it was going to make Aunt Mary feel better.   

Seated comfortably beside my mother, I was to hold the jar tightly between my feet so it wouldn’t tip over. Not having found the lid, a rag had been tied over the top. As we rounded the first tricky sharp corner in the road, we started sliding off into the ditch, and just as quickly, buttermilk was everywhere. With both of us drenched head to toe, she managed to get the car back on the road and we went on to town.

  Aunt Mary was very upset when we finally got to her place with only a cupful of buttermilk left, but she assured me my hair would be beautifully shiny as a result of the spill, and that was how she was going to use it, as a shampoo. Needless to say, I was (secretly) pleased to learn how it was going to be used.