Saturday, July 18, 2009

Milton's Cows

I've been to a lot of state and county fairs, all of which have been attended by a huge number of cows. They really are ugly and smelly creatures, yet they provide for me the most wonderful of food groups. I'm thinking right now of all my favorite foods and if it weren't for cows I wouldn't have any of them. What's better than a Sunday night of steak, sour creamed potatoes and a huge ol' bowl of chocolate ice cream? I would definitely get my own cow and worship it if I had the extra square footage. I'm not sure who it was that first thought it would be a good idea to extract milk from a cow and drink it, but I'd like to shad his hand...after it had been throughly washed, of course.

I don't think it was Milton Hershey's love of cows that caused him to become the world's best chocolatier, rather, I think it was his intense hatred of the printing apprenticeship he had been consigned to as a lad. He disliked that job so much that he once threw his hat into the press in hopes it would break down (the press). He later joined up with a candy company there in Lancaster, a job that he fell in love with. His mom financed Milton's first candy company in Philadelphia, which failed. She then forked out the dough for another candy company in Chicago. It failed. Then she financed another one in New York City, which also failed. Milton and his mom's fourth venture, the Lancaster Caramel Company, finally succeeded and was eventually sold to the American Caramel Company in 1900 for one million dollars. With that sort of crazy 1900 cash, Milton experimented with fresh milk, which was in large abundance thanks to all the local Mennonite bovine, and found a perfect recipe which made the Hershey Chocolate Company the greatest company in the whole wide world! The town of Hershey itself, complete with amusement park rides, factory tours and all was the vision of Milton Hershey, it was Hershey's can-do attitude that has inspired Sara and I to name our next child Milton.

1 comment:

Mike said...

Seriously, who in their right mind would look at a cow and say "I think I'll squeeze these things and drink whatever comes out of them."