Jul 20, 2008

THEN AND NOW: Where have the milkmen gone?

By Matt Bowling / Daily News columnist

Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part series on Palo Alto milkmen.

"Where did the milkman go?" asked Susan Jonas and Marilyn Nissenson in their wonderful 1994 book, "Going, Going Gone."

The authors answer that question and nearly 80 others in a collection of articles describing "Vanishing Americana" - which we think of as quintessentially American, but that is no longer with us. Some of the items are interesting to remember but certainly have few supporters rallying for their return - rotary phones, girdles and leisure suits come to mind. And other defunct phenomenon such as DDT, fur coats and the smell of burning leaves probably say something positive about the growth of environmental awareness in our society.

But then there are those cherished slices of Americana that still hold a place in the nation's collective memory.

Bike-riding paperboys, doctors who make house calls and gas station attendants who check your oil and tires no longer make much business sense. Still, when they faded away, it seemed that some part of the American community left with them.

And what about the milkman? The memory of the driver stepping out of the Divco truck in his crisp white suit to drop off those glass bottles - well, is there anything that seems both so outdated and yet so sadly lost?

In days past, the milkman was perhaps the ultimate illustration of customer service. Originally, in an era of poor refrigeration, milk was delivered daily with the aid of horses that knew the routes by heart - stopping at each house while their bosses carried the crates of glass bottles right to the doorstep. Hence the phrase, "Change the milkman but not the horse."

Even in the Great Depression, 70 percent of milk sold was delivered door to door by more than 70,000 milkmen nationwide. But milkmen were always more than just deliverymen with dairy products. Many would keep a house key and put the milk, eggs and cheese right in the refrigerator - or in the early days, down in a cellar ice box.

They were also known to help in other ways - leaving food out for a dog or cat, reaching something on a high shelf for an elderly customer, changing a fuse for an ill-equipped housewife. And many old-timers still remember the yellowish cream at the top of the bottle that on cold days would expand outside into "high hats," the milk chutes many homes were equipped with to make delivery easier, and the endless vaudeville circuit jokes about the milkman's good fortune spending the workday visiting lonely housewives from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In Palo Alto, a bevy of local creameries made milkmen valued community members. In fact, the city was a kind of regional dairy capital. A 1930 Palo Alto Times story tells with pride of three Palo Alto dairies that finished "win, place and show" at the Pacific Slope Dairy Show in Oakland. Indeed, in the first half of the 20th century, creamery plants and soda fountains thrived in Palo Alto. Piers Dairy, the Golden State Creamery, Easton Creamery, Altamont Creamery, University Creamery and Gold Seal Creamery all did brisk business.

Most successful of all, however, was the Peninsula Creamery, whose milkmen at one point served some 12,000 customers in their red and cream colored trucks.

Founded in 1922 by Axel Raven and Howard Cobb, the boys soon established a brand name in town - "Made right - right in Palo Alto" - mostly through ambition, a 3 a.m. daily wake-up time, 8 cent milk pints and a rented Ford truck. In 1936, the Creamery was bought by John Santana who turned the Peninsula Creamery fountain on Emerson Street into a local institution by selling "Choc Malts," BLTs and the thickest shakes in town to travelers and Paly students alike.


To read the entire story go to www.paloaltohistory.com/milkmen.html.

To read more of Matt Bowling's articles go to www.paloaltohistory.com.