The Milkman

The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV. Everywhere you look, you can’t find that now. Those were the days.

Yes, we had a milkman. My grandmother had a dairy farm until I was in 8th grade. We would take huge milk cans and take raw milk out of the tank and take them home. A big milk can would last about a week. Then when they sold the farm, we got a big milk box that was insulated and was kept on the back porch. You filled out a slip of paper and they left whatever you wanted daily. You could get ice cream, chocolate milk, cottage cheese, all the dairy stuff. We also had butcher deliveries and the Hammer Soda delivery guy.

Yep, in the early 60's. We had a milkbox on our porch where we put the old bottles and got new ones like magic. Best days were when chocolate milk appeared.

R2 here. This was our milk box type, but was much larger. Small town between Somerville and Flemington NJ.

My house had a box built into the wall of the kitchen......the milkman accessed from outside and we accessed from the inside....like a pass through.

Montreal, Canada during the 60’s and 70’s

Believe it or not, we had a milk man in the Bronx as late as 1983-84. We had a metal milk box on the porch and the milk came in glass bottles.

SEALTEST ..... Maryland

Atlanta. Mathis Dairy. Metal box by the front door. Through the 1980s.

Used to leave our milk bottle tray like this one out every late afternoon and the milkie would come around and take the empties and leave fresh bottles. When it came time to paying the bills, we'd leave the money inside the letter box or in the fuse box (what were they called?) on the front porch. This was in country Victoria and then Melbourne in the 60s through early 70s.

Oh, and forgot to add that the milkie's cart was drawn by a Clydesdale horse.

Unless there has been a large scale abandonment of doing it by delivery in England in the last decade or so, it's still done there, glass bottles and all. The B+B where I stayed in Parson's Green had it delivered. In Pennsylvania, where I am from, my parents had it delivered until about 1961 or 2 when my mother started getting milk and dairy items at the store. We also took gallon jugs to a local dairy farmer who sold raw milk for less than you could get it in the store. The quality was much better then as I seem to recall.

PS r12 again. Our milkman delivered very early in the morning and I saw him once, he wasn't nearly as cute as OP's picture as I recall.

What was the point of having it delivered rather than buying it at the store with your other groceries like now?

Our milkman used to let himself in the back door (it was always kept unlocked) and put the milk in the refrigerator. There were usually no one at home as both parents worked. This occurred in North Carolina in the 60s and 70s. I'm not sure when it stopped.

The suburbs of Wellington, New Zealand from the late 70's to the mid-80's. Milkman, more accurately, milkboy, would come by with his cart of glass bottles of milk. We would leave empty bottles out at the front gate with payment (coins) in the bottles.

My guess is that it had at least partly to do with freshness r14, straight from the dairy to your front door would seem to me fresher than buying a single use cardboard carton of milk in the grocery store. I have heard that in Europe it is common to buy a glass container and take it to the store with you each time you want milk which you siphon from a large vat. I'm not sure how sterile you have to get the bottle in between fillings though.

Yes, north shore of Boston, mid 1960s until the mid-late 70s. Metal box on the back porch. We just checked off the order slip and the half gallon glass bottles were delivered. I believe my folks just put cash in a little envelope and left it in the box with the empties. They also sold those freeze pops which we begged my mom to order for us.

Separately, we also had an egg man for quite some time. He was the guy who raised the chickens himself, I believe. It all sounds so rustic and Norman Rockwell now, doesn't it?

Yes, through the 60s and early 70s. Our house a milk chute, so he didn't have to come inside. My favourite time was summer because in addition to milk he would have glass bottles of raspberry or grape ade, which tasted like ambrosia to me. Calgary, Canada.

From the early 70’s until early 80’s that I witnessed, my grandparents in a smallish midwestern town had the bottle service outside with slips/payment. In the early 70’s, the milkman had a single horse cart. Towards the end of the decade he upgraded to a small pickup truck. Then my grandparents just went to one of the two grocery stores in town to buy gallons of milk and dairy products like everyone else. Or had ice cream delivered by the Schwan’s truck.

Yes, we had a milkman.

Remember “Milkman” on Nickatnite? I had a crush on him as a kid.

Yes, in Manhattan up till the early 80’s. Grew up in a co-op on the East Side that had a service entrance off the kitchen. In that hallway, we had a box like R4 and in it, the tray holder like R10. Glass bottles I remember we had to shake up to mix the cream on the top in. My mother used to leave notes in the rinsed our bottles to change the order, suspend, increase, etc..

Someone asked upthread why we didn’t buy in the supermarket - supermarkets like they are now didn’t exist back then, plus food shopping was very different. From my childhood I remember meat and poultry only came from butchers; fruits and veg came from the green grocer, and dry goods, frozen, and canned goods came from the supermarkets. I think we got eggs and butter from the market? But I also have a memory of my mother looking at eggs at the butcher - but they could have been special eggs, like duck and goose eggs which we did eat.

Yes, in the 80s from a local dairy that delivered milk and various kinds of cheese. The truck would come by our house once a week at 3:30 pm, just as I was getting home from school. As a teen it was my job to be there when it arrived and accept the delivery. Sometimes my mom would also phone the local supermarket and have groceries delivered instead of going to the store. Within an hour or two, a panel van would arrive and the delivery guy (an adult, not a teenager) would deliver the groceries and she’d hand him a check.

Hood dairy in the Boston area. No box. Just a shelf in our front entry. Later found out my cousin married our milkman's son.

We also had a knife sharpener who would come to our neighborhood every four months.

I remember people telling my blond, blue eyed cousin, born to parents of Italian descent, that he was the milkman's son. We were too young to know what that meant.

We had one too ...

Early 60's...........We had milk, juice, and cottage cheese place inside a gray metal box with a lid, and some type of funky insulation. I guessing it was probably asbestos.

We had a metal box on the back porch. Our brand was Dellwood.

Alberta Canada 1960’s and 1970’s. In the sixties it was with square bottles, in the seventies in plastic bags or cartons. We eventually stopped getting milk delivered but my grandmother did until the milkman stopped delivering completely. She also purchased cottage cheese, sour cream, and butter from the milkman.

R26 In "Melvin and Howard" Paul Le Mat plays a milkman who delivers more than just milk to some of the attractive housewives on his route. One of his many dreams is to be "Milkman of the Month".

😜 [italic] The Postman Always Rings Twice !

'50s/early '60s - Bay Area. We had Berkeley Farms ("Farms ... in Berkeley?" was there commercial tag line.) There was some sort of insert that you put in one of the empty bottles to indicate what you wanted in your next delivery.

Yes, in the 80s. In white glass bottles with foil lids. You returned the bottles of course. No one stole them from your front door either. I know we have more rights now as gay people but the world is so nasty and uncivilized now.

My grandmother had Twin Pines dairy in Grosse Pointe Shores, MI. Probably beginning when she moved into her home in 1940 till the 80s. There was a small little door to the left of her back door that opened from two sides the outside and inside. I was fascinated by that little milk door when I was a kid.

This is interesting ........

We had a milkman in New Jersey in the 60s - metal box in the garage. Before Pampers, there were also diaper services; working there must have been abysmal.

Shout out to Charles Chips a decade later!

Yes, we had one in the 1970s. North Hollywood, CA.

There's one milk company that still delivers in Rhode Island. Munroe Dairy.

Yes, bottled milk delivered to the back porch....There was also a truck that came by every week that sold fresh vegetables. I can see it now, with the scales hanging in the back....

Those "notes" left in the milk boxes were probably to in form the milkman what time their husbands were leaving and returning.

[quote]Yep, in the early 60's. We had a milkbox on our porch where we put the old bottles and got new ones like magic. Best days were when chocolate milk appeared.

I still to this day love chocolate milk. I have some in my fridge and had a glass earlier.

🍼 "The Milkman Always Cums Twice"

You’re correct r34. My grandmother left cash for her milk in a bottle, usually overnight. That could not occur today.