The New American Digest

Yes folks, on this date in 1853, Gail Borden patented his process for creating condensed milk. The product was successful enough that the “Gail Borden Jr., and Company” was founded in Connecticut in 1857. Gail Borden had the same business sense I have but investors saved the company in 1858 and changed the name to the “New York Condensed Milk Company“.

Sounds downright “homey”, doesn’t it?

The company prospered selling condensed milk to the Union Army – samples from 1863 are shown below.

Anyone up to popping a top bottom and sampling the contents?

No? Oh well…

The company started using glass bottles in 1885, evaporated milk in 1892, and changed the name to “Borden’s Condensed Milk Company” in 1899, changed again to the “Borden Company” in 1919.

The company reorganized as a holding company in 1929 for Borden’s Food Products, Borden’s Dairy Products, Borden’s Ice Cream and Milk, and Borden’s Cheese & Produce.

Borden created the forerunner of Key Lime Pie with its Magic Lemon Cream Pie in 1931.

The company reorganized again as a unified company in 1936, combining the four separate companies, and introduced Elsie the Cow.

Further expansion came about in WWII when the company sold non-dairy creamer, instant coffee, and powdered food.

Yum, yum!

Borden started acquiring smaller companies in the 1950s – Cracker Jack among them – and expanded into inks, fertilizers, and plastics in 1953; they were so successful, the company reorganized again to create a chemical and petroleum division.

It went on another expansion in the 1980s (including the purchase of Meadow Gold), but suffered losses in the early ’90s blamed on mismanagement, excessive debt, and too many restructurings (remember the nation-wide craze of mergers and acquisitions of the 1980s?)

The company was bought out in 1995 and shattered into many scattered pieces; the final portion sold to Kraft in 2001. One of the purchasing companies revitalized the name in 2009 but filed for bankruptcy in 2020. The assets were put up for auction, purchased, and continued to operate as “Borden Dairy Company”

The Borden name and Elsie still live on.

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Now, isn’t that far more than you wanted to know about Borden?

All because I had this photo of old condensed milk cans and found that May 14 is the day Borden filed for his patent.

Yes, I know it’s Mother’s Day – I’m ignoring it beyond this post; I hope you aren’t.

No, she’s not alive – it’s been a while now.

No, I did not have a “bad” mother nor a bad childhood.

Both her homes are gone, my old home is gone, the town I grew up in is “gone” – buried in suburbia.
It’s all a long way away both in distance and time.

It’s just another Sunday …

The Confederacy lost one of – if not the best – general on this date … and perhaps the war itself. With the possible exception of Robert E Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson spent his part of the war confounding Yankees. Accidentally shot by one of his own men (with a .67 caliber bullet) on May 2 while returning from a night patrol during the battle of Chancellorsville, he died in this building at Guinea Station, VA on May 10. He was 39yo.

“He was martial and stern in attitude and profoundly religious, a deacon in the Presbyterian Church.“

“Presently a smile of ineffable sweetness spread itself over his pale face, and he said quietly, and with an expression, as if of relief, ‘Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.'”

Harper’s Weekly reported his death:
“General “Stonewall” Jackson was badly wounded in the arm at the battles of Chancellorsville, and had his arm amputated. Jackson initially appeared to be healing, but he died from pneumonia on May 10, 1863.“

Nothing is left of Guinea Station except the railroad, nor anything of the plantation except this outbuilding and marker where Jackson was cared for and died.

We Homo sapiens learn by telling each other stories. Abstract theories and calculations are one thing, but those only come alive and change our lives when we hear it in a story.

I was camping on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. Back in the 1920 and 1930s buffalo were introduced to Catalina by a silent movie company and by the Wrigleys. They have been there ever since, and the herd size and health is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy. A bit of a contradiction that, buffalo on Catalina are exotic, and prior to white men running things, there were no large grazers on Catalina. The Conservancy wants to keep the Island in its pure and natural state. Yeah, and they also need tourist money, and the romantic pastoral sight of buffalo herds is one of the things that bring the folks from the mainland.

Since their introduction the buffalo have evolved. The forage on Catalina is poor, the fresh water is scarce, and like many island-bound species, the Catalina buffaloes are runts compared to the majestic creatures of the plains.

I was camping on the west end of the island. There is a fence at the Two Harbors isthmus to keep the buffalo out of the west end. During the day I had duties, so my only real time to get out of camp and explore was very early in the morning, walking and running the hills and trails by myself. That year a couple of buffalo had hopped the fence, or somebody left a gate open, and were wandering around the west end. One had made it into the area where I was, because there is a small trickle of a stream in the canyon coming down from Silver Peak that mostly runs year-round.

If you know what to look for, and know what to smell for, there are plenty of signs buffalo are about. It’s sort of a sweet livestock smell, not unpleasant. And they make dust wallows along the trails and dirt roads, large and shallow craters of fine dust where they roll around on their backs and sides.

One morning I got up particularly early and headed up one of the steep truck trails towards the island crest, hoping to make a long loop and come down by another route. Ahh, such good times solo trail-running in the early morning twilight, the first glimmers of the coming day lighting the sky in the east, the west sky still dark, the early-rising birds beginning to chirp in the trees and brush, the world waking up.

In the canyon it was still dark. I had been on this trail before, I knew the way. No flashlight was needed. And suddenly, right in front of me as I turned a curve in the trail, there loomed a deep-black shadow that cut off views of the trail and the landscape ahead. The shadow was motionless. No one knew where I was, I had told no one about my plans and route for that morning.

Well, I stopped. Stared for a bit into the bottomless black, and then began to silently, as best I could, backtrack down the trail always keeping my eyes on the shadow. Backing down until the shadow was out of sight. Then turned and began trotting down the trail, still silently, and looking back often. I said to myself, “I think I’ll go another way today.” They may be runts, but when you are by yourself in the wide world, that was still an awfully big shadow.

And in all the times I’ve been to Catalina since, I have never gone out on the trails while it was still dark.