Milkmen, and Other Artifacts of a Lost Era

Let me see. No wait. I've got these red spots in front of my eyes.

we still have our black, wall-mounted dial phone in the kitchen(but also have a few other new-fangled ones); it was installed when we had the house built in 1963. we've refused to give it up and it has never failed us; doesn't require any batteries either ! how is that for environmentially clean living ? hbg

No zip codes. And no area codes. In fact, telephone numbers weren't all numbers. The first two numbers were letters. BUtterfield 8, MElrose 5, etc.

Long distance telephone calls. To make one, you needed to get the operator. Receiving one was cause for serious heart palpitations. A long distance call!! And the caller and callee spent precious little time talking. In fact, they spent no time talking. They yelled. Could barely hear the other person. Long distance calls were always short and always important.

Carnival rides on trucks. A merry-go-round, the whip, some kind of ride that swung you up in the air. The truck would drive up and park. All through the street you'd hear kids yelling, "Ma! Throw me down a nickel."

Kids rode bikes and skated with no protective equipment.

Kids were not the be-all end-all of the universe. Kids were to be seen and not heard. They weren't reasoned with. They were told.

If you were sick, you didn't go to the doctor. The doctor came to you. I miss this. Our doctor was a wonderful, wonderful man. Beloved. And respected.

Professional athletes didn't brag, and they never ever would put down, insult, or bad-mouth an opponent. Ever!

Speaking of phones. Most people did not have a home phone. If someone wanted to contact you they would call the candy store phone booth. Some kid would be sent to call you to the phone and would get a 2 or 3 cent tip, maybe?

My family doctor , Dr Johnson (no ****), would come over and administer to us all and , when I had pneumonia, he was a source of medicine and entertainment. Hed stay around and give me drawing lessons. He was quite an accomplished cartoonist who was locally published. He had the skills to draw caricatures of people, animals , and fabric. the lessons he taught stood with me in my art endeavors.
I guess he was an ok doc too, Im still here with only minor childhood scars (and most of them were initially administered by the Parochial schools)

My dad wasa seargent major until after Korea,, so when I was in kinneegarten, hed pick us up at school in a car with a great big UsArmy star on it and all olive drab.

Milk SHakes that actually had milk and ice cream and werent this caregeenen, methyl tetraethyl mucilage **** you get at a DQ. aND
MALTS, vanilla Malts. Most places dont even know what the hell your talkin about. Those that do would say, 'Oh yeh i remember them, they were good werent they?"

hOW bout a hardware store wherein people knew their products? or a camera store wherein the manager kn ew cameras AND pictures.

We have a lot of AMISH general stores within a 20 mile radius. There are maybe a total of 50 Amish stores in that 120 sq mi circle. Each one has honest to goodness, real stuff, like hand operated kitchen utensils and stuff that Williams Sonoma sells for 50 times the money, and a wood burning pot belly stove . and lights that are gas mantle lamps that are so bright that its like looking into the sun.


Good fountain pens that didnt cost 300 bucks .

and kielbasi that wasnt garlic laced road kill, like the Hillshire Farms stuff they try to pass off today.

As a young girl I can remember my dad taking the car into a service station. After he pulled up to the pump, three or four men would immediately come out of the station dressed in crisp clean uniforms. My dad would say, "fill her up" as one pumped gas, another cleaned the windshield and checked the oil, and yet another would check the tire pressure…you never had to get out of the car unless you needed to use the restroom.

ahhh, the vile , gritty, rust bowled , filling station rest rooms of my yoot

I'm not old enough to have been around when egg creams had eggs and cream. They must have once contained those ingredients, right?

Since when did the milkman quit delivering? There are still milkmen in my area, dutifully going about their early morning rounds.

Is that no longer commonplace?

Fuller Brush Man
World Book Encyclopedia Salesman
Saturday Afternoon Matinees with two cartoons, a short and a double feature...admission 6 Dr. Pepper bottle caps
No high speed dentist drill
Horseshoe cleats
Cuban Heels
Pegged Pants
Flat top with ducks

When we were gonna have hamburgers, my grandmother would send me or my sister down to the store to see Mr. Henry, the Butcher, and also our next door neighbor. Mr. Henry would weigh out the Hamburg Steak (read, chuck roast) and then grind it up for us. He didn't ask how, he knew my grandmother's preference. I still vividly recall a sign on the glass of his meat case: "Fresh Ground Hamburg Steak, 9 cents/lb."

There were no McDonald's of course, but had there been, who would go? Fresh ground hamburger for under a dime a pound? You'd be crazy . . .

I saw the post calling traffic circles a "thing of the past." There is one in Houston still.

In Oregon, they still come to fill up your gas tank - its against the law to do it yourself!

You do have to wash your own windshileds and check your own oil though.

I have photos of family cars with crank holes showing. I recall when some starter buttons were located beneath the clutch. There was a push-button automatic from somebody. Our family car when I was six was a '28 Dodge Victory Six. It had wood-spoke wheels. Then there were the canvass water bags mounted on the backs of cars. My Mom quit driving because they put the shift lever on the steering column and off the floor.

tv remotes that would go boing, boing to change the channels

Home entertainment centers that had a stereo,a huge radio that recieved signals from other dimensions and a color tv that changed color schemes if you turned on the other implements in the H. E. C.

Soupy Sales, before adults found him funny

saturday morning tv that wasnt a big 4 hour commercial for some crappy toy . It was quality entertainment for kids of all ages.
and of course we have

The Stooges, what sophisticated humor, for some reason, visible only to the male of the species. Women, bless their hearts, were ill equipped to tap into the many levels of rich humor the STooges purveyed.

The memories includes a lot of sensory cues... sounds and smells now alien.
Laundry was done on Saturday morning, and was strung out to dry on "clotheslines". Saturday morning you could hear the "squeak, SQUEAK" of the clotheslines in Quadrophonic sound from all over the neighborhood. If it rained on Saturday it put the housewives in a foul mood.
Every spring(May) you would take down the Storm Windows and put up the windowscreens in their place. After the first frost you switched back.
Summer was the resounding "THWACK!" of wooden screen doors that snapped shut on a spring (no pneumatic closer).
My home town of 40,000 people had only two "exchanges" (the first three digits of a 7-digit local number), you could make a local call by dialing only 5 digits- the last digit of the exchange plus the 4 remaining digits.
You couldn't purchase your own phone, each unit had to be rented (per month) from Ma Bell... and having an "extension" for the upstairs was a status symbol. Directory-assistance/information calls were free.
Everybody's doorstep or porch had a "milkbox"... a wooden box with a hinged lid on top, all covered in galvanized steel and bearing the name of the Dairy which supplied your milk.
It made a darn good seat on the porch for little kids, an a great stepstool as well.
We could ride out of town and within 5 miles get to a small "egg-farm" for eggs that were laid THAT VERY MORNING.
Every autumn, huge clouds (millions! The sky was Darkened by the flocks!) of birds would fly south on their migratory routes (haven't seen such flocks in 25+ years).

We had the SAME "mailman" (Walt) for over thirty years... a bearded tippler who knew every name on his route and delivered it regardless of any irregularity or inaccuracy in address by the Sender.

Every vacant lot or patch of woods had paths and shortcuts, and you could pass freely as long as you didn't poke your nose around your neighbor's business.
Bags of zucchini would mysteriously appear upon the front porch in late august.. no-one would would ever DREAM of paying $1.69 p/lb. for such a thing.

Going to the "Stationer's" for writing paper... and "Carbon Paper" to make copies!

"Loose-leaf binders"!

You opened your garage-door manually... no automatic opener/closer... and NO REMOTE CONTROLs, for ANYTHING.

Only 40 years ago, there were still a few horses in our small town, and you would occasionally see a pile of Horse droppings left as a souvenier of their passing. In the winter, if the beagles got loose, they'd come home with a frozen "poopsicle" in their jaws, take up a spot in the sun out back and gnaw at it.

The smell of piles of fallen leaves being burnt curbside in the fall.

In the summer, the smell of the hot tar when they "oiled" the streets... and the sound of the loose gravel hitting the underside of the car until it got driven down into the road surface.

Local "Taverns" that only sold beer, cider and wine, no "hard liquor"... and also served various foods, having a "grill" for burgers and such.
Jars of Pickled eggs at the bar.
Little waxed paper bags of potato chips for a nickel.
Pinball machines with three balls for a dime.
Neighborhood "Soda shops" where the teens congregated.
"Duckpin" Bowling "Alleys" where the pins were set up by KIDS who WORKED for their spending cash.
"Shoe Repair" shops where you could get new heels or have your shoes and boots re-soled instead of discarding them.
Kids could walk through the neighborhood with their family dogs in attendance... and NO leash.

"Wakes" where the deceased was "laid-out" amidst stacks of "Floral Pieces"... and people would comment upon how "good" the corpse looked.
Nuns who dressed like magpies in black&white "habits" and NEVER went anywhere singly... always in Pairs or larger groups. Since every vestige of hair was veiled (like a muslim woman) we used to wonder if they actually had hair.
Church Processions in May where a parish maiden was crowned as "Queen" for the day...
and girls who got "in Trouble" leaving town to "visit relatives" for a few months.

Well, I'm retired now and live in Germany. :wink:

I remember when the mail was delivered twice a day. Once around ten, and again around two. The mailmen did not have little trucks or carts. They had a huge leather pack, a la Santa Claus, which had a shoulder strap.

I lived on a block of two family houses, where one had to climb a rather large flight of stairs to get to the apartment on top. The mailman climbed up and down, twice a day, six days a week.

The kid's in my father's family all had jobs starting at age 10. Jobs, not chores. Run down to the coal yard after school and be one of the ones chosen to sweep up the flakes for an hour, pay? 1 cent. (and try to filch a few of those lumps for the home fires.) Go down to the fresh market with the pull wagon (think Radio Flyer but home-made) see if anybody wanted their stuff delivered. Don't darest to come home without finding somebody who wanted the stuff delivered. Work the garden Spring and Summer, sell the tomatos, corn, beans and squash door to door or be a big timer like your Uncle Ben and set up a stand right there on the county roadway. (Only a mile and half away.)

So, of course, WE had jobs starting at age 10, jobs, not chores. We picked strawberries every summer until we were old enough to get a job working shade tobacco. A basket of strawberries brought you seven cents that the farmer sold for 35. Tobacco work varied in pay based on the task. Picking was best and on a good week a kid could make almost one hundred and fifty dollars. Suckering was the worst, you had to sit down in the row, in the mud and scoot along, plucking out the little sucker-leaves between the stem and the 'real leaf'. Eight dollars a day.

In the fall, not a Saturday went by without you going out with your brothers to rake leaves for the neighbors. (Ah.... yes.... that smoky scent of autumn.....winter coming soon.) and when winter did arrive you prayed for snow, first so you could miss a day at St. James but mostly so you could go shovel Mrs. Viet's walk, and Mr. Ford's walk and Mr. Leemon's walk and then go looking for somebody's car to dig out for a dollar. (Did I mention Mrs. Viet's made hot chocolate that had a scoop of marshmallow creme on the top? God, I hated taking her money and her hot chocolate.)

Oh, and when you got home from strawberry picking or tobacco, it was about four pm, time to go get the Manchester Heralds and the Hartford Times waiting for you at the Red Cross Station by the City Hall building. Hurry and throw that paper route, except I didn't throw anything. Each paper was put either under a mat or inside a storm door. Collections were on Friday night. Eleven cents a week for the Herald, eleven cents for the Times. Most folks gave you fifteen cents. The big timers who got both papers would give you a quarter.

And somewhere in the middle of all that I had the most fun of any kid on earth. Played marbles with Buddy and Dennis, went sledding on my Flexible Flyer or our big toboggan, skated on Center Springs Pond, played baseball on Valley Street and wandered through the woods like an Indian.
We rode our Columbia bicycles everywhere, all the way over town to swim at Mt. Nebo or back the other way to Salter's pond to fish. We played Monopoly or Parchesi or checkers on our front porch. We went to the park and picked up a game of Statues or Stoplight, hide and go seek, or dodge ball. When I was sixteen they finally paved the area in front of the basketball hoop, it threw my whole dribbling technique off forever. There's nothing that will increase your hand-eye skills more than trying to dribble on a dirt rock-strewn court.

I was a natural at horseshoes and will still spot you six points in a game of twenty-one for a buck a point. For two bucks a point I will throw with my eyes shut. (C'mon suckers......)


My kids didn't have jobs, they had chores, but they were nothing compared to suckering.

Joe