Got Milk? (by Michael Bracken)

When I married Temple Walker in November 2015, I did not realize I was marrying into a crime family. I’m not certain she realized it, either.

Not long after our marriage, Temple and her father—James Lincoln Walker, aka Jim—took an interest in family history and soon discovered multiple miscreants in various branches of their family tree. One stood out: Merle Dees, an indicted participant in the 10-day Louisiana Milk Strike of 1947, was Jim’s uncle by marriage (his mother’s sister’s husband).

The strike, referred to by the Times Picayune (April 4, 1947) as a “10-day reign of terror” during which “trains were held up, trucks and cars riddled with buckshot and rifle slugs and at least one person wounded,” prevented most milk deliveries to New Orleans.

The strike, called by the Dairymen’s Union (AFL) of Amite (La.) and Tangipahoa (La.) and later joined by AFL-affiliated teamsters’ locals, was, according to the Times Picayune, in response to a “drop of milk price from $5.75 to $5.20 a hundredweight for fluid containing 4 per cent butterfat.”

Milk from the Florida parishes milkshed—the eight Louisiana parishes on the east side of the Mississippi River—was the first to stop flowing into New Orleans, but the strikers soon stopped outside shipments as well.

And more than milk was at stake. The Chicago Daily Tribune (March 27, 1947) noted that 5,000 to 6,000 New Orleans members of the teamsters’ union refused to make any deliveries to retailers who continued to sell milk sold by New Orleans distributors, whose price cut set off the strike. “Observers said this will mean virtual cessation of all food deliveries in the city, since nearly all truck drivers except those who deliver milk are members of the AFL union. The alternative, for retailers, apparently will be to sell no fresh milk.”

By the time the strike ended, approximately 80,000 gallons of milk had been destroyed, and twenty-five strikers were indicted by a United States grand jury in connection with alleged violations of federal law, including retarding the mail and breaking seals on railroad cars.

Temple’s Great-Uncle Merle Dees was indicted in a true bill in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans Division (Docket No. 22,594) for “Conspiracy to Violate the Anti-Racketeering Act,” that is, he “knowingly, wrongfully, willfully, unlawfully and feloniously conspire[d] […] to obstruct, delay and affect interstate commerce and the movement of articles and commodities in interstate commerce by robbery and extortion.”

From Fact to Fiction

My father-in-law was a Louisiana-born retired mechanical engineer who spent a great deal of his free time reading mystery novels and watching televised mysteries. He and Temple—also a mystery lover—often discussed the books they read and the television programs they watched, sharing their favorites. That his daughter married a mystery writer must have amused him to no end.

At first, Merle Dees’s involvement with the Milk Strike was just a story passed down through the family, but Jim became intrigued by his uncle’s involvement. Here was a real-life mystery to be explored, and explore it he did.

As Jim sought more information about the strike, he began corresponding with Bill Dorman in the Genealogy Department of the Tangipahoa Parish Library, who provided PDFs of scanned newspaper articles and other information, which he then shared with Temple and me.

Before long, I realized the real-life adventures of my wife’s great-uncle could be the basis of a short story and, after rearranging some real-life events, working in a few other family stories, and then fictionalizing everything, I had “Spilt Milk,” published in the November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

My father-in-law passed away on Friday, January 13, 2023, so he didn’t live to see the story in print. He did, however, read the finished story in manuscript form before I submitted it.

I think he liked it.