Irish Rockers Flogging Molly have the latest addition to the buttermilk music cannon. The song “Factory Girls,” (available here thanks to youtube) has a character in the song “drinkin buttermilk all week and whisky on Sunday.” The song is well worth a listen.
Flogging Molly joins a proud cast of musicians who sing about buttermilk, as we detail in the book, including Hoagy Carmichael, Sir Mix-a-Lot, and the many proud Irish citizens over the years who have crooned out the utterly depressing folk tune Shule Aroon.
Welcome to the club.
Buttermilk enthusiast Garth Campbell Good wrote to me recently asking about The Buttermilk Corner, the all-you-can-drink buttermilk bar in Downtown Portland, circa the middle part of the last century. (The shop is profiled in the book.) I asked him to write up his impressions of the place, and he sent this response, which I’ve edited for clarity:
I talked on the phone to my brother in California - he also remembers The Buttermilk Corner in Portland. He told me the price was 5-cents and all you could drink. I remember the counter tops were white marble - I think they had at least 4 of the stone crocks around on the counters. At the far east end of the public part was dairy/milk machinery - part a separate room - with a large glass window to look into. I can’t recall if there were stools - but must have been, and they surly served food, but all I ever had was buttermilk.
I still drink LOTS of buttermilk - maybe a quart a day some times, until of late I could not find what I thought was good cultured Buttermilk, but there is a dairy in Bozeman Montana that serves Missoula, Montana that I feel any aficionado of buttermilk would agree is top notch. I buy 4 plus quarts at a time (100 miles roundtrip to the store). One last comment on buttermilk, second hand from my mother: After [my] birth in Portland, Oregon in the Good Samaritan hospital, May 1936, I had trouble keeping down nourishment. She says she fed me lots of buttermilk and that was all I could keep down.
Thanks, Garth, for the story and for providing the first example I’ve heard of where buttermilk may have literally saved someone’s life. Again, you can read more about the Buttermilk Corner in the book. Information on ordering here.
While crawling around the web the other day when I discovered that drinking buttermilk can evoke tremendous significance when it shows up in your dreams.
A website quotes what appears to be a legitimate book as saying the following:
Drinking buttermilk, denotes sorrow will follow some worldly pleasure, and some imprudence will impair the general health of the dreamer.
To give it away, or feed it to pigs, is bad still.
To dream that you are drinking buttermilk made into oyster soup, denotes that you will be called on to do some very repulsive thing, and ill luck will confront you. There are quarrels brewing and friendships threatened. If you awaken while you are drinking it, by discreet maneuvering you may effect a pleasant understanding of disagreements.
Not sure if this constitutes slander or not - feed it to pigs indeed! Buttermilk is bad news, according to these dream interpreters. My first instinct would be to disagree except for the fact that dream interpretation is not exactly a precise science, since dreams can be highly individualistic. That and I’ve never actually had a buttermilk drinking dream that I know of.
But if I do, especially if it involves oyster soup, I’ll know to watch out for trouble. Till then, I remain suspicious.
You can now buy Drinking Buttermilk as a Kindle Book on Amazon. Don’t know about you, but it makes me glad I’ve lived this long.
The paperback version is still forthcoming, and should be available in a few weeks.
Mr. Keillor,
I’m a huge fan of buttermilk. It’s rich, creamy, tangy, and delicious. What more could a guy want?
So what’s the difference between powdermilk and buttermilk? Can they be used interchangeably? Is one better than the other? Have you ever had buttermilk biscuits? Do you have any thoughts on buttermilk drinking, and it’s apparent decline over the years?
All the best,
Peter R.
Olympia, WA
My father loved buttermilk, Peter, and what’s more, he believed in its health-giving qualities. He especially loved it in the summer and would pour himself a glass and drink it with great relish and feel refreshed and ennobled. For the rest of us, the thought of drinking buttermilk was akin to the idea of drinking cow vomit, in other words something that Communists might force a child to do in order to renounce God and give up nuclear secrets. And we might have done it, too. The thought of drinking it made us tremble with revulsion. There is no connection between buttermilk and Powdermilk Biscuits. I suppose you could make Powdermilk Biscuits by adding buttermilk to the biscuit mix (in the big blue box with the picture of the biscuit on the cover) but what you would get you should be careful about offering to your friends. Why has buttermilk drinking declined over the years? I suppose for the same reason that eating mud is on the wane. Because there are better things.
(Originally published online here.)
TOP: Keillor dispensing The News From Lake Wobegon in February, 2009.
The paperback version of Drinking Buttermilk: A Eulogy for an American Tradition should be available by September 1. Watch this space for details on ordering.
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