The Milkman

[Thuer]

We are getting old. That is what happend.

I do love your story's.
Where were the day's that there where only one or two car's in the street? That you sit with all the kids in the neighbourhood by the single owner of a tv to watch the kid serie "Pippo the Clown".
Violent in kid series where not present.

Yes. we do get old. I hope so. I will be a granddad in october, and want to spoil my grandson for a very long time.

I hope so that you all are getting very old. So we can have a chat om this great forum for a long time to.

 

[Biginge]

Joe,

I had forgotten about the monkey grip patch can with the serrated top. Who amongst us "timers" hasn't ridden his Schwinn to the store with a coupla tubes from the TV to test them and get a replacement for the miscreant? I guess electronic tech finally mastered the "horizontal hold" issue.

Regards

Bill

 

[Double-O-Dave]

I'll turn 57 yrs. of age next April. Recently, my kids had a flat tire on one of their bikes. I took out a patching kit and repaired the flat on the spot and in very short time. Both of the kids looked at me in awe - like I was some kind of wizard. Cheap thrills, but at my age, you'll take all the adulation you can get.

Best regards,

Dave

 

[straightshooter1]

I, too, recall the milkman, the ice delivery wagons, radio and that new thing we didn't have yet-TV.

You have made me very thirsty for cold milk. I still think there's no better milk than that served (or consumed if Mom wasn't watching) out of a quart glass bottle. I liked it better than the fresh milk we drank at my grandparent's farm not long out of the cows.

Sadly, I haven't seen any sold in anything glass in many, many years.

Bob

 

[JcMack]

When tubeless tires came into vogue on cars I always carried a plug kit. Used it plenty of times. I've got a slow leak in one tire now. I wish the plugs worked on steel belted tires.

 

[Davwingman]

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

 

[Viss]

Our milkman was named Moose, every now and then mom would let us meet him in the driveway and get a half gallon of chocolate milk as well.

Moose eventually became the mayor in town, probably because everyone knew and liked him from his milk route. Good old days.

 

[David LaPell]

My grandfather worked as a milkman until he retired from it in 1973. To this day I wish I would have kept one of his old metal milkcrates that he had. All were embossed with the letters of Delong's Dairy who he worked for.

 

[mjr]

My dad, born in 1914, at the age of twelve drove the horse-drawn milk wagon for my grandparents' little dairy. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around that--growing up I never saw a horse-drawn anything, except in Westerns.

 

[guy22]

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.

We had an huge garden when I was growing up. Born in 1955 so this was probily in the early 60's. My Dad was a Doctor and ran into a lot of people. He came home one day and said" Got a guy with a tractor, who says he will plow the Garden for free.

My Grandmother went off!!!. Nothing plows like a good mule. She would not plant in a tractor plowed garden.
She was so mad Dad said "Get what you want".
Used to love watching the old black guy come down the road in his wagon. Hitch up his Mule and tell the Mule what to do. The Mule knew his job, and a perfect job was done.
Guy22

 

[jkmo]

Born in 56 and i remember milk being delivered in the early 60's. Quart (I think) glass bottles with the paper top with a pull tab. Peveley Dairy think. This was St Louis. MO

 

[Fox Creek]

Born 1954. I remember the milk box on the porch, covered with a ripple texture aluminum over some sort of a rigid insulation board. I remember the horse drawn bakery wagon. They sold big soft raisin cookies that seemed to me to be as big as a hub cap. Our mama would take us out to the street and buy us a treat. And the Italian merry-go-round man that would come around in the summer with his little ride towed behind his pick up. Our dog (a golden retreiver, his name was BoyOurDog)bit him when he picked my twin brother up to set him on the carosel horse. Just a nip and he said it was OK. I remember riding in the car in the dark and rain when my Mom went to pick up my Dad from work at the GE plantation and seeing the giant GE illuminated logo on the top of the administration building as we crossed the RR track. There was a radio in the kitchen on a little shelf that my Dad had built. He would lean over and tap on the volume knob with his table knife to turn it down so he could say grace.

 

[Road Rat]

Well, I remember all of the above.

Plus, in my hometown we had a man who pushed a 2 wheeled cart and sold hot tamales. Cost 10 cents...if you can imagine in Missouri!!!

Those were my favorite things from street vendors.

My Mother loved to get spices from The Watkins Man..........

Ah, the memories of youth............and before lawyers made most of it illegal!!

Gotta go.

 

[Sven]

I was the milk man back in '77 and '78. Didn't pay real well, but I enjoyed it. One older guy who retired just after I started used to deliver with horses. One year at Christmastime, so the story goes, he was offered a bit of "Christmas cheer" at a number of the homes he delivered to. Good thing the horse knew the route! They found him at the end of the day sound asleep, with the horse waiting to be let into the stable.

I ended up moving to wholesale -- delivering to stores -- and was layed off 6 moths later. That was one job I don't miss!

 

[Fredo Batali]

When I was a kid we had Tamale vendors on three wheel carts rolling around town and a Gypsy "Organ Grinder" and his monkey. That little snot cleaned us out of pennies and nickles. Persistent little cuss.

De Oppresso Liber

 

[bushmaster1313]

The glass milk bottles were sealed with wax lids and a cardboard milk cap.

If breakfast went long, sometimes the pressure would build up and the lid would launch up with a "pop".

 

[rcnixon]

I grew up in the 50's and 60's in very urban NJ. We had the coal truck, the milkman, a green grocer, a tinker who sharpened knives and scissors, oil delivery (the same company as the coal man), the cleaners picked up and dropped off the shirts, a bakery truck and someone no one has mentioned; the "Javelle Water" man. He sold bleach (Javelle Water), washing fluid (liquid soap) and bluing. Doctors still make house calls. I could roam the county on my bicycle, even into the inner city and no one bothered me except to wave or say hello. That changed about when I went to high school in 1964. I took public busses to school from first grade to HS graduation in 1968.
It was a beautiful world in a child's eyes.

Russ

 

[geoff40]

The doorstep boxes in my town read "Hood" or "Concord Dairy", the latter was also one of the little league teams I played on. My grandparents lived about 2 hours away had a small dairy operation going in those days. Holstein's and a few Jersey's for the fat content. Home churned butter, milk in a glass bottle that you scooped the cream off the top with a spoon. Just as a once a year treat, I'd love to find a place that had that sort of milk for sale.

 

[wbraswell]

Back in the 50s and 60s we had Gail Borden milk delivered to our doorstep in the brown half gallon bottles. We also had an egg lady who brought us fresh eggs every Monday.

 

[captorquewrench]

Diaper service.

You can still get it someplaces, or at least you could when my youngest was a baby.

I cloth diapered my babies and looked into diaper service when we had two in diapers.

I know what goes into a diaper, but there was something about all that fresh clean cotton coming in off the line and still warm by the sun...the kids would crawl in the laundry basket to roll in their clean diapers and they would smell them too.

There are still local companies that do deliveries for milk, groceries, etc.

beef farms I buy from often deliver ; I know dairy farms do but I pick up mine.

And it's just not the same as it used to be.

We've been talking about delivery...but does anybody remember church buses picking up kids on Sunday mornings?