By Neal Wooten
Yes, I spelled that correctly, at least going by how we said it. The subsidy cheese program, caused by a surplus of milk, ran from WWII until the early 1980s. And I gotta tell you, I miss me some gubment cheese.
We didn’t receive it, but Granny did. I think she also got powdered milk and big cans of beans, but we weren’t interested in those. Every month, she’d get a big box of cheese that weighed almost as much as she did. She’d cut a couple of inches off that big block and give the rest to us. And man, oh man, was it good. Gubment cheese made the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world.
But you had to slice it. It did not come individually wrapped. And we’re not talking Velvetta here; you had to put some pressure on that butcher knife. I remember my sister’s feet dangling in the air, a foot off the floor, as she put all her weight on the knife, trying to cut through that yellow brick. I would stand there, mouth watering. When I would ask if she could hurry, she’d shoot me an evil eye and say, “If you’re in such a hurry, do something useful like go outside and get the chainsaw.”
When Mom made macaroni-and-cheese, after she added the cheese powder that came with the box, she’d grate up some of that gubment cheese and sprinkle on there. Wow. Mac-and-cheese was already one of my favorite foods, but that was like adding ice cream to banana pudding. For decades after they stopped the cheese program, I thought something was wrong with every brand of mac-and-cheese I ate. Even in restaurants, it just didn’t measure up.
Dad would do cookouts on a cheap little grill a few times each summer. He’d add a rigid slice of gubment cheese to the burgers after he flipped them. They didn’t even melt. They’d just get a little softer, enough to conform to the shape of the patty and make incredible cheeseburgers. I would even take a slice of that cheese, break off one-inch-wide sections, and add it to my hotdogs.
Cheese omelets were another mainstay in our diets as Dad would cook them every Saturday and Sunday morning along with biscuits, grits, gravy, sausage, and hashbrowns. As with everything else, cooking omelets did not entirely melt the cheese; it just made it soft enough to cut with a fork. But those were some great omelets.
Everyone wonders what the afterlife will be like. I’m pretty sure it will be Saint Peter standing at those pearly gates with a big block of gubment cheese and the sharpest butcher knife in Heaven.
