One of the MANY things I miss about the 50’s is home delivery of bread and milk. Every Tuesday and Thursday around 4:00 in the afternoon, the “Baker” would pull his “Bread Truck” into our driveway. At first, it was light blue, and in later years, it was beige. It was owned and operated by a father and son team. The father’s name was Earl and the son’s was Tom. Tim says he occasionally still “runs into” Tom around Norwalk. “The Baker” would knock on the door once or twice, come into the kitchen, and whistle a 2-note snippet then yell, “Bakerrrr.” He would then set the 2 loaves of “Sunbeam” bread on the drier. If Tim and/or me were in the house, as soon as we heard that 2 note whistle, we made a blurred beeline for the “Baker Truck.” In the front of the truck on the dash was a long, flat wooden table top chock full of all kinds of candy, gum, and other assorted goodies designed to drive young kid’s eyes and taste buds out of control! We would grab at least 6 or 7 kinds of candy apiece and when the “Baker” came back to the truck, we would say, “Put it on our bill””! Oddly enough, I remember one of my favorite “candies” was Luden’s Cherry Cough Drops! I’d eat the whole box, one lozenge after another! I probably had enough of those during my youth to prevent me from ever coughing both my entire lifetime and then some! The “Baker” would limit us to only 3 “goodies,” since he KNEW our mother didn’t want to have to pay a large “Baker Bill” at the end of the month. Our normal “MO ” was to have whole handfuls of “goodies” and end up putting all but 3 back. If Tim and I were outside when the “Baker Truck” would pull in, we would yell, “THE BAKER!!!” then we would break the world’s record dash running to the truck. In the back of the truck was a chrome-faced built in refrigerator and right next to it was a roll of brown paper and just above a conical shaped roll of string to wrap meat in. Before we left the truck with our 3 goodies, the baker would also have us take anything extra our mother may have gotten that time. Usually this was a brown paper and string wrapped pound of bologna or such. On many occasions upon returning to the kitchen, we would tear open the “Sunbeam” bread and savor the fresh bread! I usually just ate the center and left the unbroken “crust,” or would first peal the crust off. I also would often take the uncrusted bread and squeeze in my hand until it became a ball of dough, then chewed on it as a cow chewing its cud. The “Milkman” would also pull into the driveway; however, I don’t recall which days HE came. This is likely due to him not having all the “goodies” the “Baker” did. It seems that he never came on the same days the “Baker” did, so he must have come Mondays and/or Wednesdays and/or Fridays. My “murky memory” seems to hazily picture him coming 2 days a week like the “Baker.” The milk was from the Maurer-Wikel Diary and the delivery truck was white with a “snub nosed” front. We always marveled that he drove it standing up since the seat was always swung off to the side. The milkman’s name was John and he spoke with deep raspy, “sandpaper,” voice. He had what I call a “Milky Way voice” because he talked like he had a Milky Way candy bar half chewed and stuck in his throat. We didn’t get nearly as excited when the milkman pulled in as we did with the “Baker”, however, we would very often run up to the truck and grab a quart of chocolate milk. If it was summer, we would grab a quart of orange drink, with our usual quip, “Put it on our bill.” He had the best chocolate milk on earth; it was very thick and very “chocolatey”! I’ve often wondered if products were really better when we were kids, or was it due to our young ages that we percieved EVERYTHING was better? I have always held the former as opposed to the latter! Now that I think about it, I’m sure! One of the weird thinks I remember was during the winter we would often forget to bring the milk in since it was left on the porch to the left of the wooden “big step”. When it was cold, the milk would freeze in the glass bottle and push out of the top. This would result in a shaft of frozen milk an inch or more high with the cardboard lid and the red cellophane on top! We always called this “Cat Popsicles” since the cats would all gather around licking it! Thawed out milk has a very unique taste which I can still “taste” to this day! It tastes a lot like watered down skim milk! UGGGHHH! This lends additional credibility to my theory that cow milk is fine for calves, but not humans! You’d never guess that I’m not one of the great milk lovers of the century. Now beef… that’s a different story! My standard statement to those “animal rights whackos” is, “If God had not meant for us to eat cattle, He wouldn’t have made them taste so good!” (Especially well-done and with A-1 steak sauce!) HMMMMM, today is June 22, 2003 and the FIRST Official full day of summer, I think I’ll post this story now and look for that partially filled bag of charcoal left over from last summer…