Remembering Life In The 1950s

I lived in a town in Canada we might have been a little behind you. The bread man and milk man would come up to the house through out a big weight hooked to the bridle of the horse get out and come up to the house the milk bottles were on the porch with a note and money in the bottom he would read the note get what was asked for and leave. One time my mother had a broken leg and the milk made would come into the house which was never locked feed the cat and see if mom needed anything. The good old days

 

We had home delivery of milk in the mid 60s. That was in suburbs. Nothing like that was available in the city that were in before moving to suburbs.

 

Never had air conditioning, color TV until after I joined the service. My first car was a 1950 Chevrolet I paid 35 dollars, no headliner. It blew up 2 weeks later so violently the valve cover blew off. It would still crank and run on 5 cylinders but I just parked it and moved up, a 1954 fluid drive Chrysler. A heck of a lot of car for 50 bucks, I left it at the curb at the induction center OKC, my sister eventually came by the induction center and retrieved it. Drove the car to San Diego, had to stop and replace the water pump and it cost 4 dollars for the pump. The bumper fell off and my brother wired it back on with clothes hangar wire.

 

Houston still had a huge ice house on the north end of the city near the train terminal. It was finally shut down later and demolished. A heck of a lot of ice came out of that plant. The last customers after the wide spread sale of ice boxes were just the little beer joints that used chipped block ice. They used the beer bottle caps to fill the holes in their parking lots. As a kid I just loved the smell of fresh saw dust on the floors and an overhead cooling fan with front and side garage doors up. Not last but the nice Juke Box !

 

Let's see, we had home delivery of (1) baked goods and pastries from Carter's Backery, (2) vegetables from Rodino's grocery that was delivered in an old Model T truck because the old man never learned to drive anything else, (3) Milk from Williams Dairy, (4) Chips from Charles Chips and (5) groceries once in a while from Hicks Grocery. Of course, gas was around $0.25 or less per gallon back then.

Edit Note: I forgot to add that we got ice for the ice box delivered. Unlike most homes of the late 1940s/early 1950s, we had an old ice box for keeping things cool/cold

 

My first car was a 1954 Plymouth Belvedere with 3 on the column Hy-Drive. Great learner car.

 

With today's price gouging that might have changed for the better. ;0)

 

I remember Bungalow Bar coming down my street in Brooklyn at least once a day in the summer.

 

I have to mention that we also had the Good Humor Truck, and there was always a cart park somewhere on the Main Street.
As far as home deliveries we had the milk in a glass bottle which always seem to taste better, especially the cream at the top, I can still picture the little cardboard cap.
We also had a ice / oil man, one odd thing we got to delivered was seltzer, the company that delivered it gave us a special nozzle so you can spray the seltzer, we made a lot of egg creams.

 

Yvonne, it seems like it would be exciting to grow up with your own grocery store. Lots of different people coming and going. Did you hang around the store much when you were little, or spend more time playing elsewhere?