Slippery slope

When I was a wee lass, my dad was a Teamster, working for a smallish, mostly short haul trucking firm headquartered here in Milwaukee. One of his regular routes took him back and forth to Chicago and other places in Illinois.

On some of those trips, he would smuggle contraband across the border: odd packages of what looked like butter, but wasn't.

Yes, my dad was an oleo smuggler.

Back in 1895 Wisconsin banned the sale or use of margarine colored to look like butter. Margarine sold in the Dairy State was white and unappealing, with a little packet of color you could mix in if you so desired. It wasn't until 1967 that law was repealed.

At long last, we are working on a repeal of the last remnant of the "butter wars": the ban on serving margarine in restaurants and in certain institutional settings. Oh, you can get margarine in a restaurant, but you must ask for it. Removing the ban will allow restaurants to serve margarine as a matter of course, rather than as a special request.

My dad would be happy to know it.