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.
sablemable says
I remember the milkman! We had a local dairy, Producers Creamery that delivered milk, but in the Fifties, PC started delivering milk in the wax cartons. Also, my maternal grandparents, who lived in Toledo, Ohio, got milk delivered by the Babcock Dairy. Years later, I met a man from Toledo who said Babcock Dairy continued its bottled milk deliveries up until about 1980.
Heidi Swank says
I grew up outside Prescott, Wisconsin, a town of about 3,000. I was born in 1968 and remember a milkman coming to our house when I was small. I think the milk was in glass bottles. I mostly remember that every now and then the milkman would give me one of those small cartons of chocolate milk. That was always a good day. I believe his name was Mr. Eggers. He lived in town and at Halloween would put out crates of “orange drink” for the trick or treaters. While the orange drink at Halloween lasted for quite some time, the milk delivery was gone by the time I was ten.
MrsErinD says
I was born in 1970 and live in a suburb near Pittsburgh, PA and I remember we had milk delivered when I was a kid, we had a metal box with the milk decal on it on the front porch! :O)
Anita says
I grew up in South San Francisco, born in 1955. We had Berkley Farms milk delivery twice a week for most of my childhood. I don’t remember delivery in glass bottles, I just remember the quart cartons. And we got our ice cream delivered from the milk man also.
cadman says
While there’s no milk delivery here, one of the local dairies brought back glass-bottled milk a year or two ago and it’s available through the local supermarket chain. Cream, 1%, 2%, even fresh Goat’s Milk. Costs more, of course, but it’s worth it! Bring your bottle back and get your $2 deposit.
JoAnn says
I owned a home in San Jose, California, that was built in the 1930s and it had a little compartment in the outside wall of the house for milk. There was door on the outside of the house the milkman could open to put the milk, and a corresponding door for the homeowner to take the milk out. The inside door had a little dial where you indicated how many quarts you wanted.
Cindy says
I know this is an old post, but I just found this page snooping around. I lived in a house in Northern Indiana in the 70’s and our house also had the milk door. I remember seeing the extra insulation inside it. We didn’t have milk delivery, but it was fun to have. I just visited that house a few months ago and the door is still there.
Patrick Coffey says
The option of having your milk delivered in glass bottles is alive and living in the Washington DC area thanks to the South Mountain Creamary of Middletown Md. and yes they pick up your old bottles and give you a $1.50 on each of them as well. If you live here in the DC area go to there web site http://www.southmountaincreamery.com and check it out. I buy their milk at the Vienna Farmers market every Saturday and have enjoyed immensly.
Gabbie says
I should add that we lived in a suburban mid-sized city and not in a rural area.
Gabbie says
As a kid in the 70s I remember having milk delivery for a bit. We lived in Alabama and the Meadow Gold dairy would still deliver. The milk came in cardboard half gallon containers by that time.
Monica says
we ddint have a milkman but we went to the milk barn with our metal carrier and got glass bottles we has to return, I still have the milk caps! well the inner circles!
pam kueber says
Hi Monica, I once went to an estate sale in Pittsfield – it was a house that was part of a long defunct dairy. The dairy buildings were in the back. Inside there were hundreds of old glass quart bottles, all with the logo of the dairy still embossed on them. To this day I regret not buying them all and making some sort of display out of them. Alas.