Of all the rentals I’ve lived in, my favorite was the one with the milk door thingy.
Many of our neighbors used to get milk delivered, but not us. My parents were much too frugal. We either went up the street to Lawson’s Milk (early convenience store, for those of you not from the Cleveland area) or at the grocery store. The only time I was hit by a car was when I tried crossing the street to the bus stop and a car came around the milk truck at the same time. Okay, I wasn’t actually hit by the car…it stopped about an inch away from me and I sort of teetered over onto it out of fright. But if that milk truck hadn’t been parked there…
A couple of miles from my house is a working dairy. All the milk processing is done right there. They still bottle the milk in glass bottles; until a couple of years ago, they were still using paper caps, but they use plastic now.
The dairy is family owned and operated, and I like to stop in at the sales office to buy milk because it gives me a chance to chat with the folks there. But I could have it delivered if I wanted. They restored a 1956 Divco milk truck and they use it on a local delivery route.
Sorry for the double post, but Eve, my dad was an ice delivery man at one time.
We for many years had our home heated by a coal-fired furnace. I remember each fall the truck coming to deliver the coal, which was stored in a little room in the corner of the basement.
I remember milk deliveries when I was still in grade school, early 60’s. Our milk was supposed to be homogenized, but once I found a botlle that had clotting in the top. Being a city girl I assumed it had spoiled, but my dad took a look at it, sniffed it then tasted it, and said it was cream that had risen.
We had one of those. The milkman/retired buccaneer didn’t use it, however. He came to the front door. The box was in the back yard (which, in hindsight, seems like a highly impractical place for it), and it was painted shut on the outside. You could open the box on the inside, but my dad stuffed it full of fiberglass insulation.
I could still get home delivery, if I wanted. according to the Purity Dairies website, it doesn’t cost any more than their products at the grocery store. I don’t consume enough to make it worthwhile. We had a milkman (and glass bottles) when i was a child. Funny thing is, I also seem to remember a guy who delivered potato chips. I don’t know if there were other products, but there were definitely potato chips, with a big metal cannister that was kept at home. Weird - I haven’t thought of that in years.
My husband, when he was a kid (about 10-ish) worked for the local dairy delivering milk. I think he rode it on his bike. He had a route, like a paperboy, and memorized which families got what on which days.
He also didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was 13.
Thanks, twickster, for reminding me of the cream on top, and the privilege I sometimes had of shaking the bottle to mix it in again. Thanks also to Eve for reminding me of the doctor’s visits (chicken pox and so on, nothing exciting). Finally, milk popsicles! The neighbourhood cats liked those, and so did my sister and I. Thanks for mentioning them, fishbicycle!
All I can add is that our milkman brought his stuff around in a horse-drawn wagon! That would be in the early 1950s, in a smallish farming town.
We knew the people who owned the dairy and yes, I remember the milkman bringing those bottles. And yep, they would freeze in the winter, and sometimes in the summer, it would be a little ripe if you didn’t run out and get it immediately. You could also order cottage cheese from them, but almost nobody ever did.
I also remember there was some old guy with a cart who would come by the house about twice a year to sharpen knives. My mother would go out with all our kitchen knives and he would sharpen them right there on his cart, if front of the house.
Also remember getting mail delivered twice a day - once in the morning and again in the afternoon.
And my older brother got a job where he rode this strange looking bike with a freezer in the front and sold popcicles and icecream bars to kids. He kept the job for about two weeks before admitting the damned thing was simply too heavy to pedal uphill.
I was pretty thrilled when I saw the local Albertson’s supermarket started a new delivery service by internet…simply order what you want, and they would deliver it after you got home from work. Then I read the fine print…I think delivery cost was $10.00 (without tip). So much for that.
Sorry for the slight hijack, but is it still true that margarine in Wisconsin has to be white? It is illegal for it to be yellow? When I was growing up, Wisconsin was the only state that only allowed butter, real butter, to be yellow, the “natural” color. Everything else had to be white - to show it was not the real thing. Was always very strange to visit and see white margarine.
Thanks. I had meant to ask that question to relatives who go there quite often. As a kid, it was really strange (gross) to spread something white on white bread, and I never forgot that odd, little Wisconsin law.
Queen Dairies, Lancaster, PA, early 1970s. I can just barely remember getting glass bottles, then for a while we got 1/2 gallon cartons. At some point, maybe when they switched over, they gave away a metal contraption that slid over the carton and gave it a handle. My parents still have it.
The milkman would read what we wanted from a sign in our front window and then place it in a steel box with a styrofoam liner that sat outside our kitchen door. He came twice a week as far as I remember.
I delivered groceries for my Dad a few times. He didn’t make a regular practice of having them delivered. But if someone was sick or didn’t have transportation or if that person was a little unbalanced mentally, the order was called it and delivered.
My Grandfather sold milk to the dairy. Milk that is fresh from the cow is nothing to write home about.
As recently as 1993, I knew an internist who was a doctor at Vanderbilt Medical School who would still make housecalls. Amazing person.
I didn’t know that these things would ever be unusual.
Milk from the milkman was supposedly much fresher than the milk in the dairy case at the store. It was also a heck of a lot more convenient. My mother sometimes used a grocery store that delivered, and I remember her saying that the prices were higher, and it didn’t give trading stamps (which were a BIG deal back then), but we only had the one car in the family for quite a long time. So having a grocery store that delivered, and getting fresh milk, eggs, and other dairy products on a regular basis, was quite handy for a housewife who didn’t have access to a car except for maybe once a week, on Saturdays.
In the Bodoni household, we go through about 1.5 gallons of 2% milk, half a gallon of skim milk, and about a dozen and a half eggs each week. We also go through quite a bit of cheese, though much of it probably wouldn’t be delivered by a milk delivery service. Many times we don’t need to really do much grocery shopping except for picking up the dairy and bread products that we use each week, as we tend to watch for sales, buy those items we use in bulk, and then store the excess. I’d love to have a weekly dairy delivery, but I’m not sure that I’d want to pay for it.
I THINK that I remember a couple of house calls from a doctor. I’m not really sure, though. On the other hand, last year at about this time, I was getting daily visits from a nurse in order to get drugs by IV. So we do still have some home health care available.
Here in London, I still have a milkman. He delivers the big plastic containers you can buy in the shops as well as pint sized bottles. I don’t know why they still exist, but people sem to feel they deserve support.