DID YOU STILL HAVE A MILKMAN growing up? (Do you look suspiciously like him? tee hee.) Historic New England has a really wonderful virtual-online exhibit about the history of milk home delivery from 1860-1960. The exhibit also helps explain some of the history of modern kitchens. Alas, we Retro Renovators know how the story ends. –>
I am the oldest child, born in ’59 (same year as Barbie) and I think that we actually still had a milkman delivering milk to our first little house on Buena Place in Carlsbad. The one with the countertop I once featured and mom said it was in that house! But I can’t find the post now, drats. Mom, can you verify we had a milkman?
Here in the Berkshires we still have a functional dairy, and they still do home delivery, hitting each town in the county one day per week. High Lawn Farm, a really wonderful place, it’s like a fairy tale, more than 100 years old. The milk is wonderful, but it costs more, of course. It comes from Jersey cows, and I think they say it has more protein and calcium and of course, none of those artificial hormones. On Saturdays in the summer I drive down (it’s just 2 or 3 miles away) and buy a half gallon of heavy cream. I then make the most delicious delectable ice cream in the world with a vintage electric (yes, I know…) ice cream churner that I got at a garage sale for five bucks.
The dairy! The milkman! The chocolate cows that make chocolate milk! All this is leading up to: Historic New England’s absolutely delightful virtual exhibit – From Dairy to Doorstep. Very interesting. For example, do you know the #1 factor that killed the milkman? I tested my history-teaching husband, and he guessed ‘industrial dairy farming.’ Hah! Gotcha! The answer: Refrigerators. These little details about how and why life changed – became “modern” – fascinate me. In fact, I think the reason I like the postwar era so much, rather than say, the Victorian era, is that in many ways we are still playing out the changes launched after WWII. Most all the elements important to life today gelled then.
The exhibit reports:
After World War II, change came to the milkman. The milkman was a familiar character in the neighborhoods of small towns and cities alike, and dairy products now held an unquestioned place in the American diet. Yet, refrigerators, supermarkets, suburban sprawl, and automobiles threatened home delivery. Consumers chose to live in different places and get milk in different ways. In fact, by the end of the 1950s, home delivery fell into a decline and never recovered. By the early 1950s, reliable power refrigeration replaced ice boxes and revised the homemaker’s job of buying and cooking for the household. Perishable foods like milk could now be bought in greater quantity and kept longer without spoiling, more meals could be made from leftovers, and frozen foods could replace fresh. The milkman did not have to arrive every day in order for the family to have unsoured milk.
Tour the wonderful Historic New England virtual exhibit here.
SaraTinkelman says
Yeah, and the milk came in beautiful *glass* bottles.
Leslie says
I remember milk being delivered to our house in Seattle in the 1950’s. I do not recall when it ended or if it went into the 60’s but we moved in late 1963 anyway.
I even remember the name of the delivery man. His name was Art. I recall he not only delivered milk, but also orange juice, eggs, chocolate milk and perhaps a few other things. He was a very nice man. Sometimes my mother would invite him to have coffee. I was born in 1951 so I was pretty young and did not pay much attention to it, but the fact I can remember his name and what he delivered shows the situation had some kind of impression on me. My mother would leave the bottles on the porch with a note saying what she wanted that day. I loved the 50’s and that memory for some reason is a good one. What brought me to this site was the fact I was thinking about it and so I googled the subject and found this site.
Art has probably passed on by now but if you have not, Art, and you delivered milk in Seattle in the 1950’s (I think for the Arden Milk company), thanks for the memories. We lived on 4th NW.
Oh and the bottles of milk came in that metal wiry container with a handle for carrying. Now I will go listen to some music from the 50’s.
Susan says
Our house, built in 1955 in Suburban Detroit, had a milk chute (that’s what we called it!) that we sometimes crawled through when we got locked out of the house (when we were very small, of course). We also had a laundry chute inside that delivered the clothes to the basement where the washer and dryer were. My dad was a Detroit and Livonia (our suburb) public school teacher/principal who drove a Twin Pines dairy truck in the summers. I remember sitting on the dashboard and riding with him sometimes. The yellow and green trucks were iconic! Does anybody remember Milky the Clown, their mascot?!?
sumac sue says
Hi, haven’t had a working computer for weeks, and how exciting it is to get back on here in time to discuss the subject of milk delivery.
Around 1967, we moved to northern Kentucky (south of Cincinnati), and my sister became best friends with a girl whose dad drove a dairy truck for Trauth Dairy (which still is in operation, although I don’t know if they still have home delivery). Our dad was a newspaper editor, and one day my sister came home from her friend’s house and complained, “It’s not fair — Karen’s dad brings home good stuff like chocolate ice cream, and all our dad brings home is newspapers.”
Julie Rogers says
Alja, do Oberweis. It’s great.
And studies have shown returnable glass bottles are actually greener in the long run than organic milk in recyclable bottles. (I’m not sure how they do the math, but there it is.)
We love our Oberweis — from ice cream to milk. We don’t do home delivery, but only because there are only two of us, so we don’t need milk every week.
But growing up, everyone seemed to have an Oberweis box. I grew up in Aurora, Ill., Oberweis’ home. Now, their headquarters are in North Aurora, but I’ll never forget watching them process the milk in the factory in Aurora.
Femme1 says
Um…the box was insulated…not insulted.
Femme1 says
We used to have milk delivery in Baltimore, Md., in the 60s. Green Spring Dairy would bring those cute little glass containers of sour cream and cottage cheese, too (and the glasses could be used for drinking when they were empty). We had a little insulted metal box that sat on our front porch.
sablemable says
My husband, who is 76, remembers the milk doors and the ice doors on the houses he lived in growing up in Chicago.
tailfin says
Here in Buffalo, most of the homes were built before WWII and many still have the old milk doors, although most have been sealed or even sided over. Unfortunately, my 1930 bungalow was a very basic model and has neither a milk door nor a laundry chute.
alja says
oberweis diary in the midwest delivers milk if you’re in their delivery area. they’re new to southeast michigan, and i’m anxious to try out their products. local diaries offer glass milk bottles at grocery stores here, too. our milk door was painted over. I’d love to put it back to use, but at $3 per delivery, that’s a bit steep, especially when you have to go to the grocery store anyway!