Thursday, July 26, 2012

THE MILKMAN AND THE BREADMAN HOME DELIVERY, MILKBOX

Remember when the milkman and the breadman would go door to door selling their wares. I do because I was a breadman. In 1964 when I was 12 years old I would help Bob Myles (and later John Hartwick, 2 terrific fellows) every Saturday on their bread route. I wore a "pouch" around my waist to collect money for whatever the customers would purchase.We would fill up our "basket"(2 feet by three feet with a handle) and carry it to the door of the home. Boy, that was heavy work for a kid back then but I was sure glad to get my $1.50 at the end of the day and maybe a "twofor" for myself and a choice of a nearly stale loaf that would be thrown out that day, for my family. We would then knock on the door and shout  "baker" to announce that we were there. I shouted "baker" so much in those years that it started to sound like "beggar". We sold breads of all sorts and sizes, dinner rolls, pastries, butter tarts,eccles bars, cinnamon rolls and what we called "twofors". They were little packets of 2 butter tarts, 2 cupcakes or 2 of any snack for 10 cents. Some people would put signs in their windows saying,TOASTMASTER the name of the bread company (which meant they wanted bread or something) or a sign saying NO BREAD, to save us stopping. A lot of times we would check the milkbox (remember those?) for a note as to what to leave and we would mark in the "book" how much they owed us when we came to collect at the end of the week . I learned math real quick. The milk man had his hands full also. He too used the milkbox for messages so he would know what to leave. The wooden,5 inch by 5 inch adjustable order plaque is what some customers would use. I snatched this out a rummage sale and it brought back GOOD memories. Enjoy

Trivia:  Storage unit? You can fit 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a thimble.

Did You Know?  Hawaiians once used coconut husks as toilet paper. OUCH!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment