The Shawl by Louise Erdrich Paragraph 12 – “I got my growth earlier than some boys, and, one night when I was thirteen and Doris and Raymond and I were sitting around wishing for something besides the oatmeal and commodity canned milk I’d stashed so he couldn’t sell them, I heard him coming down the road.”I understand that commodity means that the canned milk was something that they bought and is of some value that the father can sell for alcohol perhaps. This is why the boy and his siblings need to stash it away so it won’t be sold.