Dear Mom,
I’m sure you remember Dad going to the dairy to pick up milk for you. Ruthie and I always wanted to go along in the hopes of conning Dad into buying us an ice cream cone or a package of Chicklets or some other kind of candy. We’d go for the ice cream cone first. We’d be excited riding in the old green Ford thinking about what we might get. When he’d pull into the dairy and tell us to stay in the car, our hearts would sink because we knew then we wouldn’t be getting anything. That didn’t happen often. Sometimes he’d surprise us anyway and throw us a pack of Chicklets when he’d slide back into the drivers seat.
We’d get home and you’d have your Carnation powdered milk out, with additional empty glass milk bottles. Some of the bottles would already have a mixture of Carnation and water in them. You’d add the milk from the dairy—making your own what they now call 2 percent. Not sure whether they had that back then. Seemed like you saved wherever you could.
When Norm tells me I’m being cheap, I think I need to remind him of how it could be, and that I’ve clearly inherited that trait from you.
I remember adding powdered milk to whole milk to stretch it further and make 2 percent. And I remember Chicklets -- can you even buy them anymore? Thanks for sharing your memories -- they really took me back!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memories. There used to be so many independently owned dairies in South St. Louis when I was growing up; bakeries too.
ReplyDeleteComment from my sister Suzanne: Lynn, I think Dad always bought Plymouths. When I was little he had a black Plymouth, probably a '47. He'd keep a car for 10 years then get a new one. I remember when he bought the green and white Plymouth. I think it was in '57 because he bought the grey Plymouth Fury II in '67 which he sold to me and Frank in '72, breaking his "keep a car for 10 years" policy because he had the opportunity to buy Uncle Lawrence's truck. A little more info: I learned how to drive in the green and white Plymouth and when Dad bought the Fury II in '67, he let me and Warren share the green and white '57 Plymouth. You can imagine how well we shared! Also the green and white Plymouth was the car Mom was driving when she decided she'd no longer drive after attempting to accelerate up the the hill on St. Denis at St. Ferdinand after having to stop. I was with her and I will never forget the episode - Mom literally peeling up the hill after numerous attempts to release the brake, step on the clutch and the gas pedal in the right sequence so as not to kill the engine. She was a great lady, but that particular episode was more stressful than chasing chickens with their heads cut off in the basement.
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