Got Milk?

Sande Dairy Milk Coupons for one quart of milk each

Bridgeman milk delivery truck
Half pint milk bottles. These generally had a name on them so they would get back to the dairy that owned them. The name was embossed or painted on.
The method of milk delivery before motorized vehicles.

Today, we are going to talk about milk. MILK? Yes. Milk. For all of us who don’t drink it, perhaps we need an explanation of what it is.

1.
an opaque white or bluish-white liquid secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals, serving for the nourishment of their young.

2.
this liquid as secreted by cows, goats, or certain other animals and used by humans for food or as a source of butter, cheeses, yogurt, etc.

Perhaps your family homesteaded and owned a cow. These precious animals needed to be cared for to product milk for the family. Old Trunks wonders, if during the harsh winters and cold spells as we are having now, the cows weren’t brought into the house to keep them safe and continuing to produce.

When the Soo Line began its line through Rosewood, the cream was put on the train and brought to town for sale. For many families, the cream meant some spending money for extras like flour, sugar, perhaps even taxes. It was the staple for many families making pennies stretch.

Milk came to our house in quart bottles. If it sat still, the cream went to the top. Since cream was heavier, why didn’t it sink? Tom has just answered my question, it is thicker but it is lighter. Since fat rises, how come I am not flying?

Milk was delivered to the door. Our milkman actually put it in the fridge. His name was Mr. Silk. The empty bottles was a prompt as to how much to leave. It was like an inventory. Cream and other dairy products may have been available. At one time, prepaid coupons were sold, each representing a quart of milk.

Mother would shake the bottle to mix it; Grandma gently poured off the cream. There were numbers of devices on the market to siphon the cream out.

In my day, The home delivery companyies were Bridgeman or City Dairy.

If people were having their groceries and milk delivered from the store before that, think about a horse and cart bringing it to the house.

In 1883 in Duluth, Minnesota, an enterprising young man named Henry Bridgeman began peddling fresh milk house to house from a goat cart. Through persistence, hard work, quality products, and a little luck, his business grew into the largest dairy concern in the Midwest.

Land O Lakes The organization was incorporated on July 8, 1921, as the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association. In 1924, the association decided to expand its butter market, and a search was made for an appropriate brand name and trademark. A contest was announced to choose a name. To tie in with the golden color of butter, $500 in gold was offered as prize money. Two contestants, Mrs. E.B. Foss and Mr. George L. Swift, offered the winning name — Land O'Lakes, a tribute to Minnesota's thousands of sparkling lakes. The name became so popular that in 1926 the association changed its corporate name to Land O'Lakes Creameries, Inc.


There are two definitions one needs to know:

Pasteurize: Which was heating the milk to get the germs out was discovered by Louis Pasteur in 1864

Homogenize: Which was mixing it up, (meaning the fat, or cream is mixed in and there is no separation). Although it was first done in 1899, people still liked to have the butterfat. They used the butterfat for other processes and therefore didn’t become the norm for several decades. Somewhere along the line, there was a switch over.

By the time we got to elementary school milk at a penny a bottle, was available in the mid morning, it was pasteurized and homogenized. It was delivered in wire baskets and passed out by milk monitors. Milk monitors were chosen for a period of time, it was their job to go get the milk and walk between the desk rows. The bottles had silver with lettering caps and the straws were paper. Later, on Fridays, chocolate was offered. The milk was rarely ice cold. Mother paid for my milk for the year. Some paid by the week. Some didn’t have money for milk at all and there weren’t programs for that at the time.

Some class members had the rare gift of screwing off the cap with a flat hand, then smoothing it with their fingers. This group generally kept their milk tops in a stack in their desks. Another group poked their pencil into the center of the paper lid; another group drank their milk one letter at a time. B- R- I- D- G- E- M- A- N.

In the late fifties, the high school built a new cafeteria. Milk breaks were 15 minutes long and you went to the cafeteria and did self serve out of a tank link unit. One used a paper cup. The milk break meant getting out of class. There was no control over who got out or who drank milk. It appeared only the most honest of students stayed in class if they did not have money on the books . Obviously my brother and I both had milk passes. He may have even drank it. Someone wiser than I know what happened to the program.

We tried the milk delivery concept when Rachel was little. Most of the milk got left in the box outside the door and the ants would get it before we did. We stopped the program. In her elementary school, the milk came in paper cartons. Sometimes the milk, delivered in the morning, sat in the hall until afternoon.

Tom says the Johnson family were great milk drinkers and in order to conserve, they mixed whole with powdered milk. He and his sons drank several gallons a week. The milk container was always on the table at meal time. Now, he is down to less than two gallons a week; hardly enough to have a cow. And if I had to drink that much, I would have a cow!

Moo to you.

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