From: Bob Elgie <bobelgie.johnny at sympatico.ca>
Date: 10/11/2001 06:32 PM                                                                                   
Subject: Colouring the Margerine

Oh my goodness, Mr Thomas, did you ever unleash a flood of memory:
colouring the margarine. Wow!

Up here, margarine was by law sold uncoloured (for years, in fact) because
the dairy lobby insisted on it so that margarine could not be passed off as
butter at the point of sale. Or say they said.

And I remember oh so clearly now, thanks to you, that in the early fifties
my mother bought Blue Bonnet margarine, which came in a blue cardboard box
with, not surprisingly, a blue-bonneted woman's face on it. No connection
up here with the flowers of Texas, apparently. Inside was a tough, clear
plastic pouch filled with white gunk like soft Crisco, and stuck to the
inside of this pouch was another little blister containing a few drops of
an intensely deep yellow dye.

My older sister and I used to squabble over which of us would get to colour
the margarine. Back then, we squabbled over anything (and nothing) of
course, so this was not unusual. The victor got the pouch full of this
cool, slightly disgusting but also deliciously goopy white stuff to play
with. First you had to puncture the blister holding the dye by digging into
it with your thumb, always at the slight risk of squeezing too hard and
putting a hole in the outer bag as well. Mother was not amused if this
happened. Often my very small thumb wasn't up to this first step. More
derisive cries from my sister and pleas from her to be allowed to take over
from her utterly useless little brother. My mother, with her adult-sized
thumb would sometimes have to help here, pressing against the blister with
her manicured nail until you heard a tiny, muted "snap" and saw fingers of
yellow begin to shoot out into the immaculate whiteness you held in your
hands, like the sun rising over new snow. Then, if you were feeling patient
and gentle, you could tease it a little, chasing the rays of colour with
your finger on the outside of the pouch or going back to the blister to
milk it of every last bit of dye and trying with this to make tiny
capillaries of colour. You could prolong this play only so much. Very soon
the dye began to lose its intensity, and the cold whiteness of the
margarine took on a warmer and more appetising hue. No longer were there
shoots of colour darting beneath the transparent skin of the pouch. Rather,
you had an irregular pool of yellow on white, like the broken yolk of an
egg. The game changed.

Now it was time to mix, to knead, to amalgamate, blend, and homogenize. Now
vigour replaced finesse. Now you took the bag in both hands and squeezed
the margarine back and forth, digging into it with your fingers and thumbs,
exploring it, seeking out and obliterating whiteness wherever it appeared.
Cold gave way to warmth. And I think it was this transformation from the
one to the other, from the cold white blob to the warm yellow mass, that
made the whole process so pleasurable. When you were done -- and the job
took longer than you would expect, small areas of whiteness turning up from
the middle for several minutes -- you delivered to your mother for
inspection something that was now warm and soft from the heat of your
hands, that had the pale yellow colour of all sorts of good things, that
already in your mind had about it the taste and smells of fresh toast, hot
tea biscuits, and homemade jam. In your own small hands, you had made a big
part of what was home.

Thanks for the memories.

Bob Elgie