Do Any Of You Remember This?

[treeguy64]

I remember glass bottle milk delivery, to our back porch. We had the milk chute, but it was nailed shut because crime was getting more common on the South Side of Chicago, when I was a tot. I mean, we actually had a burglary in a house, three doors down, one month! Now - - - - - (Don't even go there, girlfriend, and I mean that, literally!)

 

[dpwspringer]

I lived in an urban area and remember a neighbor who still had coal dumped into the basement.

I also remember visiting relatives who lived in the country who had outhouses and fresh water wells where you got your water by lowering and raising a bucket into it. Taking a bath when you only had a well with a bucket was a lot of work and in the summer you might just take a bar of Ivory soap down to the creek to get the job done.

 

[Big Horn]

The first that I remember is a Servel gas refrigerator. We did have a milk door which the milkman did use. The dairy we used had Golden Guernsey milk at a premium price. The only other place I've seen it was New Orleans. That was really good milk. My late wife and I used the same dairy after we were married. We had a milkman until 1967 when we moved to Colorado.

There was a small hole in the corner of my grandmother's kitchen. I found out that it was for a pipe that had drained the ice box in former days. This must have been in the mid to late forties.

My grandmother had a tea man. He came, I believe, every two weeks. He sold coffee, tea, chocolate, and various odds and ends.

 

[Traveler]

I don't recall any icebox but I do remember the wood burning kitchen stove. Perhaps I remember it because it was my daily chore to chop the wood for mom. And because the pipes would freeze during the winter, I remember having to go to the creek and chop a hole in the ice so I could get 2 buckets of water for mom. I think I was in grade 3 at the time.

 

[MarkinPhx]

Sometimes it would freeze in the winter and you had to get to it before the cat did!

My city grandmother had a little milk door, similar to this one, that kept the cat away from the cream.

When I was a kid some of the neighborhood kids would light firecrackers and put them in that little compartment. Of course I never did it. I was a perfect angel.

 

[jujube]

The first that I remember is a Servel gas refrigerator. We did have a milk door which the milkman did use. The dairy we used had Golden Guernsey milk at a premium price. The only other place I've seen it was New Orleans. That was really good milk. My late wife and I used the same dairy after we were married. We had a milkman until 1967 when we moved to Colorado.

There was a small hole in the corner of my grandmother's kitchen. I found out that it was for a pipe that had drained the ice box in former days. This must have been in the mid to late forties.

My grandmother had a tea man. He came, I believe, every two weeks. He sold coffee, tea, chocolate, and various odds and ends.

We had a place that sold Golden Guernsey milk in my hometown. That was the best milk in the world. I have never seen it since.

The tea man.....that would probably have been the Jewel T man. He came around in a brown step van and sold all kinds of stuff, as you mentioned, including dishes. Both my mother and my grandmother had the Jewel T dishes, Harvest..something....pattern. You see a lot of them in antique stores.

There was also the Fuller Brush man, who sold brooms, brushes, etc. and the Watkins man, who sold extracts and flavorings.

You had the blind man selling brooms, the Encyclopedia Britannica man, the vacuum cleaner salesmen, the Avon lady, the man with the pony taking pictures of children, the ice cream truck.

If you waited long enough, the store would come to YOU.

 

[Aunt Bea]

We had a Watkins vanilla man too!!!

The vanilla man would plop into a chair in my grandmother's kitchen and talk, gossip, drink coffee and eat whatever was available until my grandmother and my mother finally scraped together enough change to buy something. I remember that he always wore a suit and an outlandish 1940's hand painted necktie.

I also remember the old man that took the cans of milk from the local farms to the creamery every day. When our well ran dry in the summer he would bring my mother several milk cans filled with scalding hot water from the creamery. She would use that hot water to do the laundry in our old wringer washing machine. We looked forward to his visits because he would give us an atomic fireball or a jawbreaker.