The Milkman

I was the milkman growing up in our home in my Philadelphia neighborhood. I was responsible for getting the freshly delivered milk bottles from the metal crate on our stoop every morning and put them in the icebox. I also had to make sure I put the empty bottles out there every night before going to bed for the real milkman. They were glass quart bottles and we went through a lot of them everyday. We had milk delivered through the 1950's and well into the 60's.

We drank a lot of milk. Every day. We had milk in our cereal, and with our lunch which we had a home every day and with our dinner. We drank milk with snacks too. I drank a lot but Tommy drank even more milk than me. We drank our milk using dixie cups and early on we were assigned different color cups. Betsy was red, I was yellow, Tom was blue, and Cathy was green. The system sort of broke down when Rita came along because the cups only came in four colors.

We also had bread delivered to our home from Bond Bakery. A similar truck would come by every few days and drop off loaves of bread. There was another truck that came by weekly to deliver eggs, meats, vegetables and fruits from local farms. We always referred to this guy as "the farmer" but when he came up the street he yelled "the eggman". I always liked it when he dropped off a basket of peaches or apples. The guy's name was Ed Kilpatrick and he became a friend of my father. For a few years we would go out to his farm during the summer to hang out and have dinner. He also owned a vacation house near Lake Wallenpaupak in the Poconos and my father rented it a few times. Once in 1967, I think, we stayed there for a month. Dad came up on weekends. I didn't particularly like it because it was too much time away from my friends in the neighborhood.