The glass milk bottles are now in Antique Malls and school kids get chocolate milk in paper cartons with the easy open top making a spout for drinking directly from the cardboard box. What is unchanged however is that the government is still paying. We now find straws on the super market shelves in boxes of 100, in restaurants, at the counters in any fast food place and in school cafeterias. The fast food places usually have jumbo plastic straws in flat metal boxes by the computer cash registers dispensed one at a time by pressing a lever, some are wrapped, some are not. A straw is no longer a big deal but thankfully some things never change.
Children still blow into the straw to make the drink bubble and annoy their parents.
When a straw is covered in paper it is still possible to rip off one end and blow in the other, sending a missile across the table to your best friend or across the room at your worst rival. My clearest memory picture of my measles episode is looking across the room, even in the dimness, and seeing a small wire handled white container left open on the dresser and a spoon sticking up from it. My dad had brought it up to me. No, I think it was his idea. He appeared to be a gruff man but he knew how much his fevered child loved ice cream.