When I first let the dogs out, it was foggy. I love fog. It always looks and feels eerie as if creatures are hiding and roaming unseen. I can imagine the sound of the shuffle of their feet as they walk.

Today will be cloudy but warm with a high of 47°. A few tall branches are swaying a bit but the rest of the trees are quiet, still. I don’t hear birds or cars or people. The dogs are napping on the couch. Jack is quiet. He likes to nap in front of the register in the guest room. I put an afghan down so he’d be comfortable. When I go up stairs, Jack comes out for some loving. His fur is usually warm. Cats know how to live.

I don’t drink just milk. I use it for cereal, for milk shakes, for recipes, for coffee and for dunking biscotti and cookies. I drank it when I was a kid. I don’t remember when I stopped drinking it, in Ghana I think. When I was in college, the milkman delivered to my apartment. My father arranged it. He worked for HP Hood, a dairy company. I’d sometimes add bread to the delivery. In Ghana, we were told not to drink milk. The cows could be tuberculin. We could drink Fan milk and Fan ice cream, It was sold on the streets by boys on bicycles. Attached to the handlebars of each bike was a cooler of sorts. Fan milk was sold in small triangular packets making it a perfect street food.

When I was a kid, we had both chocolate and white milk delivered. We never drank the chocolate milk straight. We always combined it with the white as the chocolate was a bit thick and mixing it made it last longer. My father loved Hershey’s syrup. Adding a couple of spoonfuls to white milk replaced the chocolate milk delivery. He lavishly poured the syrup on his ice cream, his vanilla ice cream. My mother made sure there was always a can of Hershey’s syrup. My father did love his treats.

I still love Oreo cookies and would probably dunk them if I had milk. The universal way to eat an Oreo is common knowledge, maybe even a birthright. The cookie is split in two. The plain side is eaten first eat then the side with the cream. Double stuffed Oreos are a gift from the Gods. I usually buy traditional Oreos with white cream, but I also love golden Oreos and chocolate covered Oreos. If I buy Oreos, they go quickly so I restrain myself, but I do buy them if I really need a boost, a little bit of sweetness. I still eat them in the traditional way. To eat them whole is a fall from greatness, a stepping off of the traditional path. It is the way of the adult.

The weather is the same as yesterday’s, light rain, white clouds and a temperature in the high 30’s. Over the weekend, we’ll have Sunday rain and a high of 56°. That seems like deck weather, but I’d have to shovel first.

So much has disappeared in my lifetime, and I’d like to resurrect a few. Woolworth’s would be first. It would be just like the one in the square when I was a kid. The floors were wooden and creaked. At the front was the check-out counter and the comic book stand. It spun. Rows of goods extended from the front to the back. I remember the toy section the best. It had jacks, yoyo’s, Fli-back paddles, Chinese finger traps, plastic green soldiers and card games like Old Maid. Nothing was expensive. Old ladies worked the register. They didn’t allow comic book reading. Sometimes I bought one.

I’d bring back the diner. It was one of my father’s stops. Sometimes I went with him, usually on a Saturday morning. I remember the diner in winter. You could feel the hot air as soon as you opened the door. The diner smelled of bacon in the morning and French fries later in the day. We ate in a booth with a tabletop jukebox, one choice for a dime and three choices for a quarter. My father would give me a quarter. When I was older, my friends and I would stop there after drill. I remember brownies with chocolate sauce.

I miss the milkman and the sound of clinking bottles. I miss the trash truck. I miss the guys with their barrels who picked up the trash and emptied in into the back of the truck. I remember their clothes were filthy. One of them would empty the garbage pail. It was in the ground. Its top had a pedal to open it. They’d pull out the pail and empty it into their barrel. I thought that had to be the worst job except for the nightsoil men in Ghana.

I’d bring back corner stores. They were the best stops for small items like bread or milk. They had large glass candy counters filled with penny candy and I remember one of them had a counter with everything Hostess. Corner stores had a feel about them, a personal feel.

I’m done pondering.