Home Delivery of Ice, Milk, Laundry, etc.

[noonblueapples]

The truck guys we have here all sell fresh sea food at the side of the road, at prices that would astonish those of you who shell out big bucks at fancy restaurants. They're all rusty old Fords with hand painted signs on the side:

SHELL FISH
SHRIMPS
CRAB MEAT
LOBSTER

NO CREDIT CARDS
FOOD STAMPS EXCEPTED

All fresher than anywhere else as well

 

[Tango Yankee]

Not quite home delivery, but I remember the Helm's Bakery truck visiting our neighborhood. Mother would buy bread, rolls, and so on. I could pick out a doughnut from the long trays that the driver would pull out from the back.

And didn't it just smell wonderful when the driver opened up those rear doors? :eusa_clap

I grew up in South Gate and remember hearing that Helm's Bakery truck coming and running out to stop him, just as eagerly as we did the ice cream man! lol

One house we lived in had a little compartment in the outside wall with a door on the outside and one on the inside. My mother said it was for milk delivery. It looked like it could hold maybe one bottle.

Now I'm living in rural Ohio. The only people who deliver here are USPS, UPS, and FedEx.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[scottyrocks]

I remember we had milk delivery up through the mid-60s in Canarsie (Brooklyn, NY). The milk box, spoken of earlier, was on the porch long after the service stopped. We also had trucks come through the neighborhood - soda (Hoffmans), knife sharpening, pizza, chinese food (Chow Chow Cup), and, of course, the enevitable ice cream trucks (Good Humour, Bungalow Bar, Mister Softee, Freezer Fresh).

As far as home delivery of groceries, a new service has been started here recently by the Stop N Shop chain. Its called Peapod. We used it a few times. Worked fine for the most part. Food was fresh, and if they were out of something, they would sub something else in if available, and it was listed on the invoice instead of us just wondering what happened to the whatever it was that was missing. Mrs. Rocks has gone back to in-store shopping, though. I'll have to ask her why.

 

[Tomasso]

Peapod. We used it a few times. Worked fine for the most part.

Yep, I use it occasionally and have no complaints. What I love is that you can order while out of town and your provisions will be waiting for you upon your return. No need to run out to the store as soon as you get home.

 

[Story]

MANCHESTER — When Sean Conrad goes metal detecting at Victory Park, he doesn't expect to find much more than coins and bottle caps. And so he was very surprised by the discovery he made last week: a newspaper carrier badge from 1933.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111230/NEWS/712309971

 

[scottyrocks]

Yep, I use it occasionally and have no complaints. What I love is that you can order while out of town and your provisions will be waiting for you upon your return. No need to run out to the store as soon as you get home.

We went back to Peapod soon after I wrote the above. Convenience wins out again.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

A guy I went to school with, his parents have a meat delivery truck. It's a big refrigerated unit with cattle horns on the front. They have pretty good stuff, though.

Everything else in the way of delivery was long gone by the time I came along. We have owned many a house with a coal chute/coal room, and a house or two with a door on the porch for milk delivery.

 

[Espee]

I got to have donuts from the Helms truck maybe once a month. The wooden drawers added to the bakery smells, I think.
The truck stopped two doors down, two or three times a week! I was jealous of that kid. But my mom said since the lady didn't drive, that's how they got their bread. Boring...
Funny thing is, the dad worked for a grocery company!

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

Schwans

 

[Stanley Doble]

When I was a kid in the fifties home milk and bread delivery was the rule in small town Ontario and the cities too. Homes built in the fifties had a little door, about 1 foot square, beside the side door about 4 feet off the ground, as Tango Yankee describes. This convenience allowed the milk man to put the milk in a little compartment the thickness of the wall, and the person inside could open another little door and get the milk without going outside.

The baker's van carried doughnuts pastries and cakes as well as bread. Made in the local bake shop downtown.

These conveniences ended in the late sixties. I suppose by then everyone had cars and refrigerators and bought their milk and bread in stores, where it was cheaper.

My great aunt Ethel said something one day that puzzled me. She died in her 100th year, in 1986. One day around 1980 she said "you know, you never see a Jew on the road anymore". I had to ask my mother what in the world she meant.

It turned out she was referring to the Jewish peddlers who used to travel the roads in a horse and wagon. Aunt Ethel was a farm wife. The peddlers would come around buying old clothes, burlap sacks, bottles, bones, horsehair, old laying hens, anything they could take to the city and sell. The farmers saved the horsehair when they curry combed their horses, they saved old sacks, bones, they wasted nothing. They set everything aside for the Sheeny Man.

My mother who was born in 1920, said the first time she saw the Sheeny Man she was scared by his long black coat and beard. But he turned out to be a nice man who liked children. She was 5 or 6 years old at the time.

Does anyone else remember the Sheeny Man? I hope this is not politically incorrect, but that is what the old folks called him.

 

[Stanley Doble]

When I was a kid in the fifties home milk and bread delivery was the rule in small town Ontario and the cities too. Homes built in the fifties had a little door, about 1 foot square, beside the side door about 4 feet off the ground, as Tango Yankee describes. This convenience allowed the milk man to put the milk in a little compartment the thickness of the wall, and the person inside could open another little door and get the milk without going outside.

The baker's van carried doughnuts pastries and cakes as well as bread. Made in the local bake shop downtown.

These conveniences ended in the late sixties. I suppose by then everyone had cars and refrigerators and bought their milk and bread in stores, where it was cheaper.

My great aunt Ethel said something one day that puzzled me. She died in her 100th year, in 1986. One day around 1980 she said "you know, you never see a Jew on the road anymore". I had to ask my mother what in the world she meant.

It turned out she was referring to the Jewish peddlers who used to travel the roads in a horse and wagon. Aunt Ethel was a farm wife. The peddlers would come around buying old clothes, burlap sacks, bottles, bones, horsehair, old laying hens, anything they could take to the city and sell. The farmers saved the horsehair when they curry combed their horses, they saved old sacks, bones, they wasted nothing. They set everything aside for the Sheeny Man.

My mother who was born in 1920, said the first time she saw the Sheeny Man turn into the lane way she was scared by his long black coat and beard. But he turned out to be a nice man who liked children. He and her father were old friends, he had been traveling the same route for years. She was 5 or 6 years old at the time.

Does anyone else remember the Sheeny Man? I hope this is not politically incorrect, but that is what the old folks called him.

 

[Espee]

Remember when Groucho sings, "Any rags any bones any bot-tles to-day?"
I don't remember which movie.

 

[Tomasso]

Does anyone else remember the Sheeny Man? I hope this is not politically incorrect, but that is what the old folks called him.

I've never actually seen a Sheeny Man but I've heard and read of them. I don't think the phrase was considered offensive as it was not used as a pejorative. The men would actually sing out the phrase to alert people to their presence when making their rounds.

When I was a kid growing up in the city there would be men driving trucks through the alleyways singing out, "Junk Man, Junk Man!" If you had anything to get rid of you'd flag them down and they'd take it off your hands. If it had any value they might even give you a couple of bucks.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In a lot of places today there's still people who drive around in old trucks and take away your old junk. They just don't bother to ask first.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Out here it's not unusual for someone to come up in a truck, offer a lump sum, and buy up everything lock, stock and barrel at a Friday yard sale and then sell it at the swap meet.

 

[AdrianLvsRocky]

In my village we still have milk men, rag and bone men, coal delivery men, fresh fish and vegetable delivery men.

I can see that things like coal delivery would be rare but didn't think the milk man had died out - not in the UK anyway.

 

[scottyrocks]

In a lot of places today there's still people who drive around in old trucks and take away your old junk. They just don't bother to ask first.

Yes, indeed. You can't leave a half way serviceable anything out at the curb for more than a day without it being removed by the van-n-pickup group. Therefore, the town's official 'special collections' unit is usally not called until a day or so after you want to be rid of something half way valuable.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Last year a friend was remodeling her kitchen and hauled the old iron sink-dishwasher unit and the old pipes into her driveway. That night some "entrepreneurs" drove up in a truck and hauled it away. We went to the police and basically were laughed out the door. "Don't leave it outside if you don't want it stolen by 'scrappers.'"

 

[AdrianLvsRocky]

Last year a friend was remodeling her kitchen and hauled the old iron sink-dishwasher unit and the old pipes into her driveway. That night some "entrepreneurs" drove up in a truck and hauled it away. We went to the police and basically were laughed out the door. "Don't leave it outside if you don't want it stolen by 'scrappers.'"

Same around here. A few weeks back our washing machine blew up beyond repair. I was going to call our local council to have them come pick it up but my husband said "Don't be silly, just leave it out the back". Sure enough, we put it out at approx 9pm and it has gone by 5:30 am when my husband left for work.

Sometimes convenient. Other times not so.

 

[Stanley Doble]

There was a coal yard in town that sold coal and wood. It lasted until the mid sixties. In the fifties we lived in a house heated by coal, I remember father shovelling the coal into the furnace in winter and later installing an Iron Fireman automatic stoker.

Through the fifties and sixties coal was phased out in favor of oil and gas furnaces.

There was also an ice house. They cut ice off a pond in winter and sold it in summer. I expect by the fifties the old ice boxes were pretty well gone. They survived by selling ice to campers and fishermen in summer, then it disappeared too.

All these things seem to have gone out about the same time, replaced and phased out in the fifties gone for good in the sixties.