New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Milk Delivery
Before chocolate milk, strawberry milk, and banana milk, there was….milk! Extracted from a 4 legged beast called cow, this strange liquid would be bottled in glass, sealed with a tin foil cap and dropped off at your doorstep or …gasp the milk chute, by sunrise. You simply had to open your front door or milk chute and there it was.
Before my time, you could leave out your own bottles or containers and the milkman would charge you according to the volume.
Wanted some cream, cheese or butter? No problem. Just leave a memo. When you were done, you rinsed, then placed the empty bottles back in the crate for the next day. Easy as pie. If you were up at the hour that the milkman made deliveries, it wouldn’t be uncommon to ask him to drop something off at a friend’s house down the road.
The occupation is mostly remembered today for being an abundant source of infidelity jokes. I’m willing to bet there are kids today who have cracked a milkman joke or two in their time – yet don’t actually know what a milkman is or did. Well, unless you share this article with them, that is.
My grandfather Thomas Hartnett was a milkman in Westport/Fall River before WWII ( Read Dairy?) . That is how he met my grandma , Marie Antoinette Antaya. He drove fast. She never looked before crossing from the factory. He nearly hit her. They swore in French and English. Married 42 years, death do they part.
My father Richard Proulx was my mother’s ( Patricia Hartnett) paperboy before they met. So much for social media! Good jobs for their time.
I seem to remember in the early 50’s the milk bottles having paper tops. In the winter the bottles would freeze and break on our back porch. In first grade with Miss Webb the milk bottles had pull up tabs to insert your straw. (1956)
Remember every one of these things! Early 60’s, used to be a milkman for Salvadors Dairy in Dartmouth MA. The ice cream stand is still operational in the summer! Very popular place! At that time, all the ice cream was made at the dairy!
Worked on a Gulf Hill Dairy milk truck on Saturday (5AM-1PM) schlepping milk bottles up tenements for just $2 ($.25/hr) and a few containers of chocolate milk. I’m both ashamed I got so little and proud of my work ethic. Luckily I had a Standard-Times paper route too.
The corner drug store fountain got a lot of my earned money, places like Lincoln Drugs in the north end. I was very fond of the Lime Rickey’s there.
I remember all of those. In addition; the rag man who came around in horse drawn Cart to collect rags, egg delivery, coal delivery, grocery delivery from neighborhood market, house deliveries from Cushmans Bakery. Good old times
Can’t forget the “pony boy” who traveled the streets and offered ice cream and creamsicles and popsicles and we got to pet the pony, to boot. Also the ” ice man” who delivered the ice and would chip off a chunk for us kids to eat and cool off in the summer.
Still get my milk delivered in glass bottles. from Munroe Dairy out of Rhode Island
When I was a kid living in North Fairhaven, we had milk delivered by Gulf Hill Dairy. He was almost part of the family. He’d leave glass bottles from his wire bottle rack in the box by the front door. I remember in colder winter days, the milk would freeze and would lift the cap off the bottle. We would get two different types of bottles depending on whether my mother ordered plain milk or milf with cream. The cream would rise to the top of this oddly shaped bottle and you would use this plunger devise to push into the bottle and seal the smaller opening under the main opening and pour off the cream.
We also had the old man we called “The Rag Man” who would push a cart up and down the streets calling out “rags!”. Never knew his name or anything else about him, except for his gravelly, hoarse voice.