You Know You Are Old When

[lman]

YKYO if you remember ice and milk delivered by horse and wagon.

All of our milk was delivered directly from the barn to the house after I milked the cow before school.

 

[SARG]

Just discovered another today.......... When your butt disappears from old age and your jeans falling down are a source of true aggravation ...... You realize what a brilliant idea suspenders are.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

William Frawley aka "Fred Mertz" had it figured out without suspenders!

 

[goeduck]

All of our milk was delivered directly from the barn to the house after I milked the cow before school.

I had the evening milking, my next older brother took the morning. We always had about 4 cows on the family parcel and milked them to bring to the house and also to feed their calves. I had 6 brothers and 2 sisters and each one of my sisters had 7 brothers. Big family. I was the tail end brother (sisters did not have to milk), so I had no one to hand off the milking to after I "took the lantern" (no electricity in the barn). Since I was a thinking person and I was at the end of the line, I needed an out; I went to my parents and told them that I wanted to milk the dairy cow (we always had 1 dairy), bring half to the house, half to its calf and let the beef cows nurse their own calves. Best idea I ever had by that age and my hands didn't smell like poo (well not as bad) when I went on dates. Plus I had more time to do sports. To this day I rib my brothers for not asking themselves why they were milking beef cows just to feed their calves out of a bucket. Usually I was able to teach a few of the beef cows to nurse the milk cow's calf in addition to their own, so it made it even easier.

 

[Gem99ultra]

Our milk was also delivered to thehouse - hopefully after the Ice Man delivered our block of ice for the Ice Box. Do you remember the Ice Man, the guy that brought a block of ice, carrying it from his truck and putting it into the Ice Box. He always had a big sheet of leather hanging over his back, helping him stay dry and to spread the load.
Ice was not somthing to be liberal with. It needed to last all week, but it usually didn't.

 

[Runner]

Our milk was also delivered to thehouse - hopefully after the Ice Man delivered our block of ice for the Ice Box. Do you remember the Ice Man, the guy that brought a block of ice, carrying it from his truck and putting it into the Ice Box. He always had a big sheet of leather hanging over his back, helping him stay dry and to spread the load.
Ice was not somthing to be liberal with. It needed to last all week, but it usually didn't.

It is so hard to imagine a world without mechanical refrigeration....

 

[lman]

We had a milk house that had a cement tank. The tank was filled with cold water. Ten gallon milk cans full of milk were placed in the cold water for cooling.

 

[MossRoad]

The county home near where I grew up had a spring cellar build into the side of a hill. It was all concrete. Spring water came into a trough and ran around 3 walls of the cellar then out to a pond. They'd set the full milk cans in the trough. Building is still there, but half full of dirt. Some homeless people were crawling in there and living in the trash that people would dump in from the top hole.

The red arrow points to the doorway. (click to enlarge).

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

The county home near where I grew up had a spring cellar build into the side of a hill. It was all concrete. Spring water came into a trough and ran around 3 walls of the cellar then out to a pond. They'd set the full milk cans in the trough. Building is still there, but half full of dirt. Some homeless people were crawling in there and living in the trash that people would dump in from the top hole.

The red arrow points to the doorway. (click to enlarge).

View attachment 3998928

I can't make it out and that "home" looks like a large asylum!

 

[MossRoad]

I can't make it out and that "home" looks like a large asylum!

Yep. It had a lot of disabled people, both physically and mentally, that couldn't afford to be taken care of anywhere else, had no family, etc... it just closed 2 years ago. My parents called it the old folks home. Several times a year we'd gather magazines from the neighborhood and take them down there for the residents to read.

When I was a kid, it was a working farm, that made a profit. It supplied most of its own food, meat, milk, veggies, etc... and sold the rest for $$ to pay for other services they needed. Some of the residents would work the farm, but it was managed by a farmer that lived in a house about 1/4 behind it. They had two dams on a creek to make ponds for the cows and the spring cellar.

There's a potter's field at the rear of the property with many hundreds of indigent people are buried.