Vintage Milkbox on Dorothy’s Front Stoop

Used as a mailbox now, these silver milk boxes were on everyone’s porch steps. Growing up our dairy was Alderney Farms in New Jersey.  Thick glass, with paperboard circle caps. You could get a dozen eggs, some cottage cheese. Leave the empties for the milkman to exchange for fresh cold bottles of milk. We still had delivery in the mid sixties.  The delivery truck door had a sound when it’d slide. You can buy an old milkbox on ebay.

vintage milkbox  from Harmony Dairy Co., used as a mailbox now.
Lavender from Dorothy's garden rests on her vintage milkbox. I think I need to get her a new flag!

15 thoughts on “Vintage Milkbox on Dorothy’s Front Stoop

  1. Of course I ‘love’ this photo. You are such an artist!
    I too grew up with milk fresh from the cow…and then when my children were growing up milk was brought in glass bottles and put in this box. On Saturdays the milkman seemed to time his delivery to when we were baking cookies and we would give him a few.
    Dorothy

  2. we did not have a milk box, he just left the milk by the front door. We also had a breadman that would come around in a station wagon.

  3. Loving the photo and everyone’s comments! We had a “milkman” and bread delivery, too. And the postman walked his route in the morning and afternoon (1940ties)- don’t remember when it changed to one delivery. His name was Jimmy Clancy. Can’t recall the milk and breadman’s names!

    • Could it be because she is the proud mother of an officer of the United States Marine Corps?

      I hope you are well.

      Bill

  4. This brings back memories, indeed! I’m old enough to remember milk deliveries in a wagon drawn by a horse (wearing a funny hat with ears cut out) and whoever got to the milk bottles first, got to sip the cream off the top! Those were the days!!!! As my kids say, “in olden times, when you were a kid, Mom….”/ Great photo. love, L.

  5. The milkman would park his truck in the center of our dead-end street and make his house by house deliveries. On the hot summer days we kids would sneak into the truck and come out with a nice cool ice cube that had a hole in the middle so you could stick it on your finger and lick it!

  6. We had a milk box but it wasn’t big enough. The milkman used to leave some of it on top.(11 people in the house)

    I also remember wondering why we didn’t have a beer box too. The beer man seemed to come much more frequently and you had to pay him right away. My questions to my parents about this went unanswered.

  7. We lived at Ft. Leavenworth when I was little, and I remember our milkman.
    He left milk in glass bottles, and eggs, and sometimes there was 1 bottle of chocolate milk.
    I miss that…….milk in plastic is just not the same.
    I also miss the Postman, who came up on our porch and handed my Mom the mail,
    and sometimes came inside for a cold drink. Those were the easy-going, friendly Fifties.
    Thanks for another beautiful photo and memory, Ruthie!

  8. We not only had a milk truck delivery in Maine, but we has Cushman’s bakery truck deliveries, as well…just leave the sign in the window and they would stop with “whoopie pies”, yodels, crumbcake, and other goodies…yum! It broke up such a long winter-what a highlight for me to put the Cushman’s sign in our window so long ago…John talks about having a knife sharpening man, umbrella man, selzer man, vegetable man, and iceman- all in The Bronx…why leave the house? Thanks for jogging our memory.Great composition, too!

  9. Was that milkbox from Harmony Dairy in Pittsburgh. My great uncle used to own that dairy.

  10. Pingback: Weekly Photo Challenge : Nostalgic | Ruth E Hendricks Photography

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