My daughter lives in the countryside and still has milk delivered to her door. Mostly, it is to support the local dairy farmers. She and her husband, however, have to collect it as soon as the frontbell is rung because the birds seem to like milk first thing in the morning as well.

One of my Uncles was a milk man for many years until they did away the milk man job. I think he got up around 4 am to start his route. I believe I was a teenager when they eliminated the milkman's delivery job all together. That was about the time when the "milk store" was built and replaced the milkman. Where I grew up, a couple of the small towns had Dairy plants where the large semi's would bring in the milk from the dairy farmers to have it processed and bottled. The milkman would go to the dairy plants daily and pick up the milk for his deliveries......fresh from the dairy! And you could be sure their was no hormones, etc. in the milk neither!

We had our milk delivered too, in glass bottles - four to a wire crate if I remember right. Then when that stopped, we would always drive through the dairy for our milk. Then finally we ended up getting it at the store.

Wonder what our kids will remember about their lives? "Well, kids, I had to actually flick a switch to turn the light on and off. And did you know your grandparents didn't even have remote controls?" And the kids will wonder how we ever lived that way!

We had an outhouse when I was a little girl, but we used a chamber pot under the bed at night. We didn't have a bathtub until I was around 10 and it was a luxury to behold. The water came from the well(away from the outhouse BTW) so we were only allowed to fill it up 1/10th of the way. Before that we all got a bath in a wash tub.
Oh, the good old days...

Did you have to heat up water before hand, Chick? Just curious. A friend of mine here said that before central heating in London, they used to haul a bathtub in front of the lone fireplace in their house in the winter. Then they had ceramic hotwater bottles which they fill up to warm up the beds before they went to sleep.

Lola, We used beach rocks heated in the oven for warming the beds. When plastic bottles came to our town, we filled those with hot water.

Yes, the washtub had to have water heated on boilers on the wood stove. Saturday night was bath night. There was seven of us and now I think, "Last one in is the dirtiest one out", ha ha.
She had to use that same washtub to wash all our clothes too.

I would chop boughs for my mom to light the fire. Dad worked away as a carpenter. One very cold winter,when he was gone, my Mom chopped up our Organ to keep us warm because the snow kept her from getting into the wood shed. Boy, we have it easy these days. It's nice to think these memories, thanks for the post.

chick

Chick, have you written a book?

My Hubby grew up pretty much like you did. They were 7 children. He was born right after World War II ended; so like millions of other families, they had nothing, absolutely nothing. How those mothers managed, is beyond me. They did get food stamps and the children got a pair of shoes for school. Other than that they all went barefoot. They would remove the horse manure from the streets for a few potatoes, and help the farmers out for a loaf of bread. When I ask him about his childhood he says he had a good childhood, except for being hungry most of the time. At least the kids played together, climbed trees and what not, and helped their parents as much as they could. Despite all the hardships, he still managed to make something out of himself. Just like you are doing Chick! You're really something.

Dang, you people must be old. I don't remember any of that stuff....

Boy I feel like we were wealthy, NOT! But we had an indoor bathroom, we had a milkman and we kids use to fight for the layer of cream atop each glass bottle. He also left us butter, yogurt and cheese. We picked our own vegetables once a week at the farm where we drove to get fresh eggs.

I remember we had an ice box, a chest the ice man would come and fill with this big block of ice. Oh, and the coal bin and watching the coal truck man shovel the coal into the shoot where it slid down into the basement bin.

Mother made her own lye soap for laundry and had a washboard and an old fashion washing machine and it had on it a roller that squeezed the clothes and partly dried them, before hanging them on the line.

Never saw a vacuum cleaner until I was 10 and thats when we also got our first round screen black and white TV.

I remember mother having our shoes resoled so many times and they had metal taps to make them last longer. Does anyone remember hand-me-down? I wore my male cousins jeans, and t-shirts and jackets, then if still in decent shape my brother got then.

But we survived and I never knew we weren't rich...
At Christmas we kids each got ONE gift not like my own kids where the floor was covered with boxes...

Not everything, but somethings were better then and taught us good lessons about life.

JJ, my Hubby was born 1939...he's 10 years older than I am. I sure had a different childhood from his. I had it all, from growing up with television to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, whenever I wanted. When I hear him tell his story, I sometimes feel like I'm listening to a grandfather talk. Wait! He is a grandfather. Yikes! And I'm a grandmother!