The Milkman

[rimfired]

1956. We lived on a paved dead-end street. Had an insulated aluminum milk box on the porch stoop with a note attached for the days delivery.

Jay Ashworth drove the horse-drawn wagon down our street every morning. Clewells Dairy.

He would let us kids ride-on back up to the end of the street.

Simple times and pleasures.

 

[chief38]

In addition to the Milkman, we had a Seltza delivered each week, and Charles Chips delivered once a month. There was also the Fruit man that came down the street each week selling farm fresh Cantillopes, Watermelons, tomatoes, corn etc... along with the Good Humor Man in the Summer. YUP, those were the good ol' days!!

 

[charlie sherrill]

Up until the early 60's we still had a couple of horse drawn businessmen. One hauled block ice for the fridge and a few others carried plows and would take their mule off the wagon and hook him to a plow and turn up your garden. I remember the wagons had rubber tires. We still had a milkman but by then he was driving a stepvan. The railroad was a block from my house and my mother would let me run down there at 4:00 p.m. every day to watch two steam engines from the Mississippi Central Railroad pull a load of cars. The engineer and the guy in the caboose would always wave at me. I remember when we got our first dial telephone in 1953. Before that you just picked it up and told the operator the three digit number you wanted to call and she hooked you up. There were still a few "A" and "T" model cars and trucks running around then also.

 

[mwtdvm]

I'm 64 now...

And I guess I was a handsome child.. It was often asked as to who I took after, Mom or Dad.. As is often the case, the little pitcher has big ears at 3 or 4 repeated what Dad said once, in jest...

"My Dad says I look like the Milkman."

Definitely a "show stopper" at the time. As I have aged, I am definitely my father's child and as my mother was not a blonde, she was sure I was her's as well...

 

[Stu1205]

And I guess I was a handsome child.. It was often asked as to who I took after, Mom or Dad.. As is often the case, the little pitcher has big ears at 3 or 4 repeated what Dad said once, in jest...

"My Dad says I look like the Milkman."

Definitely a "show stopper" at the time. As I have aged, I am definitely my father's child and as my mother was not a blonde, she was sure I was her's as well...

My Dad always said that I look like the milkman too.....but, then again...he was a milkman.

Stu

 

[A10]

My stepson swears his youngest looks just like the Schwann's guy......

 

[Evil Dog]

I still fondly remember the Helms Bakery truck.

 

[Bekeart]

The ICE card in the window.

Rotated it to indicate amount of ice wanted.

Simple, efficient, labor saving

Bekeart

 

[TAROMAN]

Our milkman was named Archie.
Drove a DIVCO.
Last year at a local car show, there was a DIVCO street rod.

 

[feralmerril]

The coal delivery man wasnt too romantic. There was a crippled guy that would set up a outdoor movie on friday nights in a vacant lot across from our country store. They would pass a hat around for him.
My grandpa owned the store. He fixed up a model T truck and had several grocery routes that served outlieing farms. My mom did the selling and tradeing for eggs at about 15 years old and my uncle did the driveing at 13 years old. My mom loved dealing with the public selling stuff her entire life. She knew everyone in the country from those days. Up untill her mid 70`s she still would drive a pickup truck of fruit and vegtables to different towns on their market days. She was featured in a aricle in the oshkosh newspaper. Someone nicknamed her "Apple mary".

 

[H Richard]

I can just barely remember the "Iceman" still making rounds, and he would chip us off a hunk in hot weather. He had a truck, not horses. But that ended in the later 40's after WWII.

 

[cougar14]

Fresh sausage, milk, and double-yolk brown eggs every Saturday morning. My dad had a pot-belly stove in his cabinet shop, he would drive to the sawmill and get a load of log shavings, mostly bark, and I got to unload it. Never had a pair of gloves.

 

[HGWT]

I remember begging the milkman for a little chunk of ice on those very hot summer days. He usually take his ice pick and chip a chunk off.
Years ago I show my kids an ice pick and they couldn't figure out what it was.

 

[JcMack]

Milk man, Fruit wagon guy, Knife sharpener guy, Rag wagon guy, Coal guy, Fuller brush man, Insurance guy picked up payments, The occasional bum got a sandwich.
A "housewife" was safe from all these people, and the doctor made house calls.

 

[ladder13]

All of the above. Then we had the "entrepreneurs" who bought a block of ice, and some flavored syrups. They would shave the ice and put some syrup on it, inside a waxed paper cone. They were called the piragua man, or sometimes the pee agua man

 

[airman]

And there was the Fuller brush man.
We cold get milk delivered as late as 1959.
'Swahn' (??) still works our neighborhood selling frozen stuff.

 

[feralmerril]

My ex wifes grandfather headed up fuller brush for all the western states years ago. He was a very intelligent spry guy that taught salesship seminars to big stores like penneys etc into his 80`s.
There also was a few traveling con artists too. I remember one deal where a guy had a car rigged up with two gas tanks. He would drive in some farmers yard, ask for a water hose, put some pills of waffers in the tank with the water and sell the rubes some tablets that would turn water into gas!
My folks used to tell storys about gypsey carravans with wagons and later big cars. That was about finished at the dawn of my memory.
Mom caught a gypsey woman shoplifting in her store. Mom always was fiesty and threw her out. Mom said the gypsey wished a wart on her nose and she got one! Back around late 1930s or early 40s we had some salesman rep for some company that was suppose to be the worlds tallest man come by. He gave my folks probley a promotional ring that he wore. It was huge. Dont know what happened to it.

 

[PALADIN85020]

When I was just a kid during WWII, we had a horse-drawn milk wagon stop at our house each morning. The horse knew when to stop at each of his regular delivery points - the milkman just whistled, and the horse went on and stopped at each of the houses.

In the summer, being a milkman had fringe benefits. In those days, people kept cool at night by sleeping on "sleeping porches" in Phoenix, usually nude or scantily attired, and covered by wet sheets to take advantage of the evaporation cooling principle. Those early-morning milkman visits sometimes gave 'em some interesting views if the sheets had fallen off overnight!

Many homes had "ice boxes" which were loaded regularly by icemen, also with horse-drawn wagons. They wore leather shoulder protectors, and drew an ice block from the wagon with tongs, threw the block up over their shoulder, and placed the ice in the box. The ice was placed higher than the contents so that the cold air could circulate down, and it had a drip tray underneath the ice. Some homes had those modern "fridges" that cooled by electricity, though. I remember going up to the iceman at his wagon, and he'd chip off a piece of ice for me as a treat on those hot summer days in Arizona.

We have it pretty easy today compared to the "good ol' days!"

John

 

[Biginge]

Broke a honey locust thorn off in my heel on a 3 day camplng trip. CA. 1952 North Louisiana. Got home on Sunday, blood poisoning had set in. Doc came to Mothers call and did surgical removal in my bed. Ether and all. This was way more than splinter removal. No forms to sign, no insurance to verify,etc. It was just a flat out easier way of life. I am lucky to have been a child of the 40-50s era.

Regards

Bill

 

[Joe in SC]

The gypseys still occasionally make their rounds through here. The most common ploy is driveway coating which is done for a hundred bucks or so. They will keep after you by lowering the price by a few dollars. A few years ago they conned the old lady next door and her drive looked great until it rained a few days later and washed it all down the street.

When I was a kid of about 10 to 12 back in the late 60's the local dairy still delivered door to door. I had a job in the summer riding the milk truck and jumping off to run the milk to the door. I got a hot breakfast at the local cafe every morning and a buck fifty every day. The real pay was all the chocolate milk mixed with half and half or heavy creme I could drink.
All the milk was iced down every morning at the dairy and by the time I got on board it was ice cold. I usually knocked back a couple quarts of chocolate milk mixed with 1/2 and 1/2 or creme every day. Was a wonder I wasn't a fat kid every summer from all the calories. I guess I was too active to gain weight.

Dogs were the worst nightmare for a milk delivery boy. We delivered a lot to country homes and every dang one of them had a dog or two. Most were all bark, but every now and then a shepard or collie or large mutt was all business. I got to be pretty good at taking a flying leap in the open side door of the delivery truck on the move with a big ole' hound nipping at my heels. I've had my jeans hip pocket ripped off by a big old mean dog more than once. Hell of it was, that more than once the dogs owner could be seen laughing his arse off on the porch as the truck pulled out of sight. I didn't find it a damn bit amusing at the time. Looking back it was just the life and times of a kid trying to have a good time and earn a few bucks for bb's and black cat firecrackers. More often than not I had to spend a little for the little oval shaped can of monkey grip tire patching kits. Yall remember the one with the serrated lid for roughing up the inner tube prior to spreading the adhesive and lighting it off with a big old kitchen match ? Man, those were simpler times when common sense ruled the day and political correctness wasn't even a word. What the hell happened ?