Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I was talking about a couple of posts back.
This talk of phones reminds me that for a couple of years I was a out of hours contact point and had to carry a pager. AND I had a company mobile phone (!) so I could follow up on messages if I was out of the house when I was paged.
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Newfangled!
My father was a doctor. When he was on call on one of his days off, we’d sometimes go out to dinner. Before leaving the house, he’d call the office and tell them where he was going and the phone number there; and he’d tell the restaurant who he was and that he might be getting an emergency call.
Milk chutes: A little cubical box about 15 inches on a side - built into the side of the house with a door leading to the outside and another leading to the inside. A grocery company would have a regular route delivering staples such as milk, bread, eggs, and pastries, from Divco trucks. The delivery person would open the “outside” door and place the food in the box. The homeowner would open the “inside” door and retrieve the food. (Billing was monthly?)
When I was a kid, every house in the neighborhood had a milk box on the porch - a metal cube that the guy who delivered the dairy stuff early in the morning could put the stuff in. No idea how long it was in use (I didn’t get up early enough to catch Mom or Dad bringing in the milk and eggs). We also hung a glass mug on the mailbox (attached to the doorframe), so the mailman could get a drink for himself at the outside faucet.
Yeah, we had those even in the Bronx in the 1950s, with milk delivered in glass bottles. No eggs though.
When I was very young there was a junkman/knife sharpener who would drive through the neighborhood with a cart and horse.
Yeah, we had a milk chute and daily(?) milk delivery. My mom also kept a can of bacon grease in there, until one Halloween, when some kids used it to spread bacon grease on our windows and car.
Sometimes we used to hitch a ride on the back of the milk truck. Or inside, where there were huge blocks of ice.
In addition to having milk delivered, a farmer (“Clarence”) from a nearby farm came around with a truck full of live chickens. My mom would go out and choose one, and the farmer would kill it and remove the feathers. He also sold us eggs. My job was to cut off the head and clean out the inside of the chicken, still warm.
My mom grew up in a small town in England, and mentioned “rag-and-bone men” who are likewise a dying breed:
When I lived in Salt Lake City I lived in a 1920s apartment house that had these on every apartment. They were nailed shut on both sides, but I puled out the nails so that I could have my newspaper delivered through this. They opened the outside door and put the paper in, and I just had to open the inside door to get my paper without leaving my apartment. I nailed it back up when I left.
The apartment also had an icebox – a literal icebox – built into the kitchen wall. They had outfitted it with refrigerator workings sometime after it was built, but it was long dead, and I had a real, fre-standing refrigerator crowding my tiny kitchen.
And there was also a Murphy Bed – the kind that folds up into the wall (although I didn’t use it). Living there felt like being in a silent comedy short.
The milk boxes were around the neighborhood into the mid70s by the way (though as I mentioned, I don’t know if they were still being used then).
The equivalent of milk boxes in hotels - the “Servidor”. Leave your shoes to be polished or you pants to be pressed, and they would be returned without disturbing you with a knock on the door. Apparently the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC still has them, but nailed shut. Fragments of the Past | Boston Hospitality Review
There was apparently something like this for suits in some hotels – the front door of the room was hollow and could open from either side, and you could hang your suit in there to be picked up by the staff and pressed without them having to come into your room. Presumably you could ;lock the inside after putting your suit in there, which would keep people from breaking into your room.
I wouldn’t know about these, but one featured in the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich comedy What’s Up Doc, starring Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand. O’Neal’s character stays in a room with one, and there a comedy bit of business where he gets opening the suit door mixed up with opening the room door.
Evidently the Dorr-in-the-door was called a “servidor,” too, and was made by the US Servidor Company. They had these at the Hotel Pennsylvania, too:
My grandparents lived in a five-story walkup in the Bronx. They had a dumbwaiter in the kitchen in which you could place your garbage and send it down to the basement. It was hand powered with a pulley. You would place the trash bag in the box, and then pull on a rope to raise or lower it. I have no idea how it worked on that end. I imagine it got dumped off automatically since I can’t imagine there was someone hanging around the basement to remove it (it was a small building).
I was fascinated by it and thought it would be cool to ride in it but it was too small even when I was little.
I’m surprised neighborhood knife sharpeners went away. It seems like that could still be a viable service since everyone has knives and it’s a hassle to sharpen them yourself or take them someplace to have it done.
I wonder if some of these neighborhood services declined along with the decline in a dedicated homemaker. If no one is home because they are out working, the neighborhood vendors aren’t going to get many customers.
There is still (at least, as of a year or two ago) a guy who comes through our neighborhood once or twice a year, with a pushcart, who sharpens knives. It’s a complete throwback to an earlier era.
More likely it had to do with it becoming easier and cheaper to replace knives and scissors than to sharpen them , or people being able to sharpen them themselves or something similar - because there is still at least one knife sharpening truck in my area. I’ve seen his schedule announced on Facebook - and like every other business that used to cater to dedicated homemakers* , the schedule has apparently changed to reflect the hours when customers are available. (evenings and weekends)
- When I was a kid, almost all stores were closed on Sunday, plenty were closed or closed early on Saturday and if a store had evening hours, it was only one or two days a week.
One of the regular vendors at a nearby farmers’ market is a knife sharpening business, which again fits when people are available. (And he can do more business standing in a stall than than he could going door to door.)
I remember the knife sharpener walking through our street in the summer days crying out KNIVES, KNIVES. Now with air-conditioning and better insulated windows, I doubt that anyone would even hear.
There could probably be an app for tinkers/small jobbers where you select the service you want and it sees if anyone is in the area. If not then it might let you make an appointment/alert you when they’ll be close, since I doubt if anyone needs a knife sharpened THIS VERY SECOND.