When
I was a kid the world I lived in was very different from the world my grandkids
live in today. In my world there were a lot more people involved in our daily lives
– and many of those people were almost
like members of the family.
It
is important to understand that the following people didn’t just come to our
house daily or at least several times a week, they knew our house and our
neighborhood. They knew the families and looked out for them too. If something
looked wrong or out of place, they would check to make sure things were OK.
The
first person I will tell you about came to our house several times a week. He
came when mother put a sign similar to the one below in the bedroom window that
faced the street.
The
number that she put on top told the iceman how many pounds of ice to deliver.
The ice was a big block. We would be sitting at the kitchen table eating
breakfast when the backdoor would open and we would hear “Iceman!”
He walked in with the block of ice thrown over his shoulder and go straight to the
icebox. Ours was like the one below.
See
the open door on the top left. That is where he put the block of ice. It was how we kept the food cold in the icebox. The ice would slowly melt and water would drain into a pan at the bottom. I can still smell the odor that
escaped when the door to part where the block of ice was kept.
Every
day another man came by our very early in the morning, usually before we even
got out of bed.
The
milkman delivered fresh milk in glass bottles. He would place the bottles on
the front porch close to the door. Mother would put the empty milk bottles out
at night and he would take them away.
Every
full bottle had a cardboard top that looked like this.
We
would collect them and play like they were coins in games we played. Another
man that came to our house six-days a week was the postman.
See
the big bag the postman above is carrying? Our postman would park his mail-truck at
one end of the street, get out with his bag bulging, and start down one side of
the street. Everyone had a mailbox on their front porch that looked something
like this.
The
mailman would check and see if there were any letters in it that needed to be
mailed and take them. He would then put the day’s mail in it. He would go to
the end of the block and then crossover to the other side of the street and
work his way back to the mail-truck.
There
are two other people I want to tell you about that caught my attention in the
spring, when the focus was on gardening. The first is Mr. Ferguson. He lived a
few houses down the street from us. Dad hired him every year to plow our field
before we planted the garden. This is how he plowed it.
I
would walk behind him in the freshly plowed dirt and listen to him talking to
his horses as he worked. He would make this sound or that sound and they would
speed up, slow down, turn right, turn left, or stop – often without him pulling on the reins. The smell of freshly plowed
dirt is something I will never forget.
The
last person I will introduce you to today is Mr. Bevils. He had his own horses
and plowed his own garden. He raised a lot of vegetables and early in the morning
he would load a wagon that looked similar to the one below.
He
would drive his wagon downtown to the Market Square and stay there until he
sold everything. I would hear the empty wagon and the clopping of the horses
hooves coming down the street and run out an wave at him.
One
last memory that I will share is about our old green army truck. I was a kid right
after World War II and my dad bought an old army truck at an Army auction that
looked like the one below.
It
was always exciting to ride in it. You couldn’t get it stuck and it would have
pulled an army tank if needed. When it was time to go somewhere, mom, dad and I
piled in the cab and took off.
Well,
that is the world I grew up in as a kid. It was full of people who did jobs,
most of which no longer exists. There were so many local jobs that anyone that
wanted to work could usually find one.
I hope you enjoyed the journey.
Jim
Myers
