HOW IT USED TO BE

I had to go to the grocery store today to get milk and bread. Now back in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s it was a lot easier to get these 2 items and save on gasoline as well.

When I was very little, my mother had a bake day like most women did. I really don’t remember this clearly and sometime in my young life this changed. The change was the Bread Man. Every week he would roll his truck into our driveway and my mother would purchase the bread, rolls, hotdog, or hamburger buns that we needed. He would make his way down the street, going into every drive that welcomed him. The transactions were conducted quickly and without fanfare. He sold bread, we bought bread. He also sold those wonderful little chocolate cupcakes with the cream filling. Sometimes we would manage to “find” a dime lying around the house and use it to buy these delightful treats. I still buy these things and they still taste as good as they did when I was a kid.

The Milk Man also made his appointed rounds. He came twice a week, if I remember correctly. My mother would leave the emty glass bottles on the porch and he would pick them up and replace them with full ones. (Conservation and recycling at work again!) He came fairly early in the morning and once a week he would leave a bill. If we needed more than we normally got my mom would leave a note for him. Milk men were delivering into the mid 1970’s in my home town and some folks would still like to see them coming down their drive.

Milk and bread were not the only things that were available at your door. The dry cleaners had a pick up and delivery service. Once a week we would send out the dry cleaning and the following week it would be back at which time he would pick up more. I have no idea what we were getting cleaned because my father did not wear a suit to work but we helped keep the cleaners solvent.

The Jewel Tea Man and the Fuller Brush Man completed the shop at home experience. These guys each had their niche. The Jewel Tea Company had all kinds of neat stuff from jewelry to knicknacks. My mother was for some reason leary of our Jewel Tea guy and would only open the door a crack to speak to him. I wonder if she heard some awful story about him. At any rate, she bought very little from him. Now the Fuller Brush man sold cleaning supplies and of course, brushes. This company started in 1906 and is still around today.

So you see how easy it was to shop from home. That’s how it used to be.  Now we sit with our computers and shop but we still have to go out to get the milk.

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