Still get milk deliveries and house calls from doctors here. The solution to the blue tit problem is yogurt cartons over the top of the bottles – leave them on the empties and the milko puts them on top of the new ones. This solution spread among the humans about as fast as the cream stealing idea spread among the birds. As well as everything else mentioned about the convenience of milk deliveries the milk would be there in time for breakfast so it wouldn’t matter if you were completely out the night before. These days milk arrives at any time between 2 am and noon. When I was a kid we had a fish van that came on Fridays, soft drink delivery and, in the autumn, french onion sellers on bicycles with the strings of onions round their necks. My 96 year old neighbour has regular visits from her doctor, as she cannot make it to the surgery these days.
I had a house call from a doctor last year when I had food poisoning. I had to call NHS direct first and convince them I was ill enough for the emergency doctor to phone, and then tell him that I could barely make it to the bathroom so I wasn’t able to make it to casualty!
My Grandfather was a milkman, and we had our milk delivered up until I was 5 or 6 (this was 1975 or so). He used to time his breaks so he could spend them at our house, and I used to play board games with him. I’d have them all set up so that they’d be ready to go when he walked in the door.
He took me with him on the milk route a couple times, too. I got to sit next to him and he’d give me small cartons of chocolate milk to drink.
Milk delivery isn’t all that archaic a thing - when I lived in Colorado in the 90s, there were at least 2 dairies in my small town that delivered milk, eggs, orange juice, and butter.
Dave’s dad, to this day, will have patients in to the house, although Dave doesn’t remember if he ever made house calls to the patient’s house.
I grew up with milk delivery in Southern Alberta. Alpha Dairies (which is no longer called Alpha Dairies). Darrell would bring milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, juices, etc twice a week. We had a sign which we put in the window to signal we wanted delivery that day, and a pre-printed list on which we marked off what we wanted. Glass bottles until about 1977, then bags, then the usual paperboard. He was still delivering milk door-to-door when I moved away in 1985.
[b[MisterThyristor ** - You’ve got a good point about the stay-at-home moms. And even moms who could drive often didn’t have the car. THere was usually one family car which the dad took to work. Of course, you could always send the kids tot he store on their bikes, but for regularly used items, delivery was more convenient. And Charles Chips sounds about right. It could’ve been them.
StG
My mom still gets home delivered-milk in Saskatoon. Twice a week (Tues and Fri, I think) and it comes in cardboard cartons. The milkman will also bring other dairy stuff (cheese, yogurt, etc.) upon request and egg nog around Christmas time.
When its 30 below, the milkman will put the cartons of milk in a “cooler” that keeps them “warm” enough so they don’t freeze before mom gets home.
When I was a kid, a knife man used to come by and sharpen stuff for us. Haven’t seen him in a number of years though.
That Aussie “MOOO” truck is precious!..I, too, remember the glass milk bottles with the cardboard tops and the cream on top. We played drop the clothes pin, and then later, spin the bottle (an early eHarmony.noncom game for you younger geeks).
Our local dairy (bottler) was nearby and as kids (needless to say) we could peek inside and sometimes go in, and watch the bottles flow along the conveyers and get washed, filled and capped. We had signs to post in our window telling the milkman how many quarts we wanted. Or, maybe that was how many blocks of ice (yes ice) we wanted from the iceman when he cometh. More recently I bought from the Danbury Mint an 8-inch-long model of a milk truck.
One of the big regional dairy brands in New England then (and still, I think), was Hood’s Milk. They also made "Hoodsie’s, a cardboard cup of icecream, also with a cardboard lid, on the underside of which was a photo of some movie star. You had to lick the ice cream off to see who it was. I was rich once, but then my Mom threw away all my Hoodsie lids. :mad:
As for white margarine, your state was not the only one that required it. I think it was a federal law as it applied to Mass. back then-maybe just during the war (not the “big” one (I), the “good” one(II)) . Some brands came with a separate packet of orange or yellow coloring which we could knead into the white margarine to color it.
When I was a little archer, we had milk delivered at home. IIRC, there were foil lids all over the tops of the bottles and little cardboard caps with tabs under the foil. The yummy thing to do was be the first to open the bottle, pull off the cardboard cap and lick the cream off the inside of the cap. Unhomogenized milk – yum…
Precious mem’ries, how they linger…
Towne Club also had stores in Northeast Ohio. I was in high school when the outlet in my suburb of Cleveland was in operation, though, so I had experience with grocery store pop by then. My mom (who still doesn’t drive and had four kids by her seventh wedding anniversary, putting her in the natural demographic for purchasing from deliverymen) bought from Charles Chips and Producers Milk Company. The first milkman I remember was Emery, but John (whom we called “Yeah Yeah” because he was a rather laconic man and responded to most attempts at conversation with the quoted phrase) served for a longer period. During the summer, he’d add Popsicles, Nutty Buddies, and Eskimo Pies to his stock. He also stocked Nordica Yogurt Sundae (which Mom never bought) and soy-based imitation milk (which he foisted off on us a couple of times – funny, the “improved” fprmula was just as “yucky” as the earlier version). Eggnog was available around Christmas.
Besides Producers, Oberlin Farms and Dairymens’ also sent trucks through the neighborhood. Oh yeah, we also had one of those metal chests, but Mom was always home to let “Yeah Yeah” in, so the rusty chest became first base in our backyard kickball games. And yes, kittenblue, I remember Lawson’s, including the Big O jingle that can be found by scrolling down the linked page.
We had a milk chute built into the side of my parents’ first house. I think I was in Grade 2 when I was leaving for school and lo, there was the prettiest cat by our back door. Well, I reaaaallly wanted to have a pet. I knew that exact moment wouldn’t be the best time to ask my mom because she was getting ready for work.
Yep. I put the cat in the milk box, intending to collect the poor thing after school and then pop the question to mom.
Apparently I drove mom nuts trying to find the caterwauling beast.
I don’t recall that we had our milk delivered when I was growing up (Washington, D.C., 1960s), but I may be wrong about that, I seem to remember an insulated metal box that used to sit on our front porch. Does anyone else from the city or the surrounding area remember the Sealtest dairy that stood, IIRC, either on the north side of M Street N.W. or between M and Pennsylvania Avenue just east of where the streets cross Rock Creek into Georgetown?
I live in Chicagoland and milk, cream, and butter is delivered Tuesdays from the dairy, not a supermarket.
I can’t reminisce, as my parents still get milk delivered twice a week, in suburban Montreal. The list still includes orange juice, eggs, cheese, etc., but they just get milk.
Heck, I grew up in Philly too but my milk memories are markedly different.
Mom would walk us over to the Pathmark on Ivy Hill Road ( which I believe is still there… ) and we’d use the small cart. She’d haul a hellaciously large box of powdered milk home and we drank that.
Yes. Powdered milk. Horrible stuff. Absolutely disgusting. And I wonder why I am the way I am today. My gosh…
Cartooniverse
Ooh yes, I remember milk deliveries. Come to think of it, that would be very useful now - milk just adds more weight to the shopping that then has to be dragged home. (I suspect it might not be practical 'cos of living in a high-rise block though.)
Now for a tiny hijack - I wonder how many U.K. Dopers read this thread and inwardly mutter - "HAH! I remember when we used to have milk in Schools.
I remember white margarine years ago in Saskatchewan. The colour originally came as a little envelope of bright-orange powder, and you’d have to put everything in a bowl to mix it. Later there was a great technological advance: the margarine was in a plastic bag with a little bubble of dye on one side. You could pinch the bubble to burst it (almost always inside!) and knead the bag to mix. The regulation was dropped a few years later.
Milkman came to our building (in the Bronx) until I was about 3 or so before I can remember him, then we got a big milk vending machine in the basement near the laundry room. I don’t remember much about it–it was gone by about '75 at the latest–but I do remember it had ordinary and skim and chocolate milk, which came down a chute into the front. I think it was smallish, sturdy bottles and I have no idea what the prices were.
And, BTW, yea verily, skim milk sucked mightily in those days. I know it had been made for centuries by then but for some reason what was sold in stores was thin and indescribably bad-tasting and a ghastly shade of light blue. It wasn’t until I started dieting seriouly in my mid-thirties that I dared to try it again.
As a kid, I remember home delivery of milk, & other dairy products. They were put in an insulated metal box at the back door. (I think my mother just threw the box away recently – she had continued to use it for storage for about 25 years after they stopped delivering milk.)
But recently, on business travel, I was in Fargo, ND. And discovered that they still have home delivery in the Fargo, ND/Moorhead, MN area. Plus they deliver cheese, orange juice, etc. All from the local farmer-owned co-op dairy: Cass-Clay Co-op
I remember…back when milk was 4 cents a bottle. You could buy tokens from the milkman or the dairy, but a lot of people just left the change in the empty bottles that were left out to be collected. I must have been about 5 or 6 when I hit on the nefarious scheme of STEALING milk money from the neighbours’ bottles: I must have amassed about 10 whole cents, which I then took to the local dairy to buy lollies {see, in them days, 10 cents could buy you a WHOLE lot of lollies. God, I’m 36 and I sound like Abe Simpson}. Sadly, my career as a master-criminal was thwarted by Mr Rudd, the dairy owner, who marched me straight home to my parents. You see, Watson, THE COINS WERE STILL WET, and his keen logical mind led him to the inescapable conclusion that they had been STOLEN from FRESHLY RINSED MILK BOTTLES!
We used to have milk in school in Australia when I was a kid. At recess everyone guzzled down a little bottle of milk (a third of a pint IIRC) before going about their normal activities. There were several spots around the school with crates of these little bottles.
It is school milk that has put me off drinking a straight glass of milk . I can drink a milk- shake and have it on cereal. But a glass of milk , no. The reason was that most days the milk came to us warm and sometimes on the turn . That used to turn my stomach.
What made it worse was that ,when I became more senior in the school ,I was put in charge of the distribution. The milk crates sat outside in the sunshine , some was inevitably spilt , that turned sour and that smell hung around for ever. Very off-putting.