The Boy Who Loved Elsie the Cow

When I was young I had a wild crush on Elsie the Cow.  Now it can be revealed.  Now this could be somewhat troubling looking back to this youthful insanity. But I also thought my grandmother was also "I Love Lucy" on TV and Lassie lived with my aunt in California (she had collies), the crush was just kind of silly.  

I remember thinking Elsie had a great smile and oh, that wonderful twinkle in her eye!  My mother had sent in for a brooch with Elsie's likeness on it surrounded by a large daisy, much like in the picture here.  I am sure I thought my mother actually knew Elsie and Elsie had given this to her personally.  (I think I still have that brooch somewhere.) I also liked the daisies.  They were big black-eyed Susan's like the ones that grew along our fence in front of our house.

But alas, is it any wonder if my boyhood crush came to an end when I learned Elsie was married...to Elmer the Bull!  That's right, THAT Elmer, the one of Elmer's Glue fame.  I must have realized there was no future for me with Elsie under those circumstances.  (The other more obvious reasons did not become apparent to me until sometime later.)  To adher to such a flour based that was outside the box would surely end my days of cut and paste when cut and paste meant cutting out sillouettes from construction paper and gluing them to the bulletin board as an art project.

To this day, I remember Elsie fondly.  She is the symbol of a simpler day when milk was unchallengeable as healthy for us and we didn't worry about over-eating because we played hide and seek, tag, jump rope and ran races, rode bikes and did athletic stunts on monkey bars every night after school and all day Saturday.  Fat had no chance of accumulating in our arteries and we believed it when they said, "Milk, it does a body good."

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A Brief History of Elsie according to Wikipedia:

Elsie was created in the 1930s to symbolize the 'Perfect Dairy Product' and made an appearance at the New York World's Fair in 1939.  Her husband was Elmer the Bull, later lent to Borden's chemical division as the mascot for Elmer's Glue. Their offspring included Beulah, Beauregard (born 1948), and twins Larabee and Lobelia (born 1957). She is buried at Walker-Gordon Farm (now a housing development) in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey.