Milkmen, and Other Artifacts of a Lost Era

Ya never see classy bus drivers like ya used to do in the past . . .


When i was a liddly, we would take a penny to school each day, to pay for the half-pint of milk, in a glass bottle, which we got every afternoon.

When I was a kid, we had a chicken man. Yep, he was Jack the Chicken Man, and delivered free-range birds to your door. I always thought that was really cool. As for bus drivers, I remember Rick the Bus Driver, who used to take us to Junior High. He looked like Matthew McHanaughy's (sp?) character from 'Dazed and Confused' and made a habit of getting youngsters high and then telling them how to seduce Filipino maids, many of whom were employed in the area. He may have even shown the kidlets a gun once. When I was really young, I actually had a wonderful bus driver named Sky, who took me to my first diner. The grilled cheese was worth getting up early for. Sadly, he passed on years ago.

Other than that, I would say, vinyl, 8-tracks, and even cassettes are nearly incomprehensible to the young.

When I pantomime talking on the phone, I put one hand on my ear, and one on my mouth. Now THAT really dates me!

At the west side of the traffic circle, at the intersection of Main and Center Streets, stood Officer Taggert of the Manchester Police Department. There were no traffic lights to halt the speeding Desotos intent on running down the tiny children on their way to Lincoln Elementary School. So, Officer Taggert would step out onto Center Street and, with just his white gloved hand raised, stop the world.

He said "Good Morning." and "Study hard today." and "Hi there, guy."
It seemed like such an honor.

Until I got caught by one of the neighbors, I would cross Center Street a couple of blocks down just so I could be re-crossed by Officer Taggert.

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Notes for the young:

Traffic circle, an incredibly bad way to organize traffic, still widely in use today in Europe.

Desoto: a rugged, no nonsense, and no style car.

Caught by a neighbor: the network of mothers, more alert than the FBI ever was for persons stepping out of line, communicated apparently tele-pathicly, or by other mysterious avian means, between and amongst each other so that any decent kind of mischief had to be done with as much concealment as the French Underground. Otherwise, one would arrive home to hear " Well, guess what a little bird told me about you and Tommy Ford and the side of Mr. Edward's garage??!? (Gulp.)

Phoenix's telephone picture reminded me of something else . . . When we wanted to make a call, one picked up the phone, and . . .

Miss Betty ? Would you please connect me to the Archer residence?

The Archers are speaking to the Carters right now . . . I'll break in and ask Mrs. Archer to call you when she's done.

Thank you, Miss Betty.

Then you'd cradle your phone and wait. When Mrs. Archer was done, she'd jiggle the cradle, and Miss Betty would connect her to your line. And Joe's absolutely correct about the Ladies National Security Network--Miss Betty was a key collaborator. The three most rapid forms of communication were telephone, telegraph and tell Miss Betty--she knew all of the latest gossip, and helped keep track of unruly children . . .

When I said to one of our kids when he was being repetative "you sound like a broken record" he just stared at me and had no idea what I was talking about.

I remember when I was a kid hunting for discarded soda bottles to redeem the deposits, and saving up for the Ice Cream Man. Alas, both now gone.

We spent a year in Bismarck, North Dakota back in '90-91. They still had Milkmen then. I have no idea if they still do.

Roller skates, the adjustable metal kind that required a skate key and fit on over your shoes. The wheels were metal, too. A few minutes on those babies and your fillings were jarred loose.

If you found a discarded single skate, you could take it apart and nail the font and back pieces to the ends of a 2x4. nail an orange crate on end to that, and then two pieces of wood to the top of the orange crate for handles. Presto, scooter!

I'm still vaguely young myself, being 28, but I've had conversations with those 10 years younger about mobile (cell) phones. They can't believe that people could live their lives without one. I told them that it basically meant you made plans to meet someone, and stuck to it, otherwise you would soon lose all your friends. The concept still baffled them.

delivered free-range birds to your door

dead or alive?

We also used to have "The Pop Man", who'd come round with a little open sided van/truck and sell glass bottles of fizzy beverages in exotic flavours like Cherryade, Limeade, Shandy, Cola (not Coke, Pepsi etc, but Cola!). There was 10 pence deposit on the bottles, so you saved them up for the next time he came round and he knocked the money off your next purhcase. They don't come round any more.

We do still have quite a few milkmen in Britain, although it's mainly older folks who use them. I buy my milk from the shop, cos I don't like the idea of it sitting outside, and the glass bottles were a pain.

The children of a friend got in trouble for not calling home when they were delayed at their grandparent's house--and pleaded their inability to comprehend and use the rotary telephone they found there . . . and in fact, i believe they were baffled about its operation . . .

Okay. How about this? Racing home from school in 1954(?) so fast that when you got there you had to wait until the television started it's afternoon broadcast again. When they weren't on the air they showed a picture of an Indian Chief, like the one on the paper pads at school so I was sure they were connected somehow, he was surrounded by circular lines that wavered in and out as the signal faded.

Channel 8 New Haven was on from seven in the morning till nine am, then it went off till noon when it aired the two new soapshows for a full half hour each. Then it was off again until Four PM when they broadcast ten minutes of cartoons followed by Kate Smith "When the Moon comes over the Mountain". Then we were required to go clean up after the dog, empty the trash, wash our hands, set the table and be ready for when Dad came home from work at five.

There were two other stations, Two and Six, but unless Dad was there to breathe on the antenna and get the aluminum foil just right, you couldn't really see anything or you could see but not hear. ( All that changed when we put the big antenna up in the attic (1957?) We spent hours relaying "How's that?" "A little more fuzzy." messages up and down the stairs till we got it just right. )

Changing channels was easy. You got out of the easy chair walked over to the set and carefully click-click-clicked your way around the dial.

Joe

heeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .


We got one channel . . . if you didn't like what was on, or it wasn't broadcasting, you could listen to the radio or read a book . . . but never complain, my granmother always had a job for any child who complained of boredom . . .

Ah yes, the fine art of antenna adjustment!

Oh! I'd forgotten about the sodaman! He had no Pepsi or Coke or Hires Root Beer, he had cream soda, orange soda and something lime green that tasted like ground-up lollypops. There may have been a cherry flavor too.

We slugged in down right there on Newman Street so we could have our penny deposit back.

Joe

My mother remembers the live market, where you could get a turkey or the like and bring it home to kosher kill it. She well recalls carp swimming around in the bathtub waiting for, well, for dinner.

I remember metal skates with skate keys (thanks for reminding me, George! :-D) and nudging the side of a tone arm to get a record to stop skipping. I also recall mimeographs - this was before photocopying became economically feasible for schools - and the smell of newly mimeoed pages. I also remember when the most exotic food you could get was pizza and occasionally Chinese.

Play dates are a mystery to me. I used to just go out and play. On the street. In the Bronx. No big deal.

Seltzer delivery men were commonplace. Those blue-glass bottles and a cold shpritz.

Penny candy was a penny. Is there anything now that costs one cent?

Three Musketeer bars were big enough for three people. And they had two dents in the top of the bar to guide in the division of the monster thing.

People left their chairs on the ground floor under the stairs so that when they sat out on the street in warm weather they didn't have to carry the chairs up and down the stairs. Baby carriages, the big kind--like station wagons for babies--were also left under the stairs.

We used to sit on the running boards of the cars parked on the streets. Do young people know what running boards are?

On Halloween, kids ran unsupervised through the streets and rang the doorbells of strangers. There was no concern about eating the candy gotten this way.

Kids who failed were actually left back in school.

There was no such thing as ADD. Kids who were unfocused and unruly were judged to be unfocused and unruly.

Kids actually came down with measles, mumps, and chicken pox. No vaccines. People also got polio. The horror of the summer months.

BTW, I still have my skate key. It's not the kind of thing one parts with readily.

I remember being able to play with nothing but an imagination, and a neighbors back yard overrun with tall grass.