
I had a friend whose favorite expression was "well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit." It sounds dirty, but when you think about it, it isn’t. Not too dirty, anyway.
In our much-younger days, I used to buy margarine instead of butter, and discovered (a) it tastes worse and (b) butter isn’t that much more expensive. And when I learned that margarine was all trans fats, I decided that, in the long run, we were better off having butter.
Mom was seven when World War II broke out, and she said you couldn’t buy butter, which they were told was all being sent overseas for the troops fighting. She said that margarine was white and came with a packet of what was essentially food coloring that you could blend into the margarine to make it look like butter. Sounds even more gross than margarine already is.
They had to substitute for coffee then, too, usually with chicory. I’ve never tasted it, but it’s supposedly a reasonable facsimile of the real thing. When all the men came home from overseas, I guess they preferred instant coffee to ground coffee, because that’s what they had in their rations. If that’s the case, why did they advertise that a brand of instant was more like fresh-brewed, if instant was superior, at least to their taste buds?

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is brought to you each week by Linda Hill and this station. Now here are SeƱor Wences and Johnny for Parkay margarine.