When I was youngster and needed pocket money my father would initially seek to deny his monetary responsibilities by tracing my parentage back to the milkman. Dad had a warped sense of humour, but I was savvy enough to know that the milkman wasn’t really my father; I didn’t even look like him. Not that I would have minded. Our milkman was one of the funniest men I have ever known and I would have been more than happy to have inherited his infectious sense of humour.
The man in question was Ron Matthews, and my father used to reckon that he missed his vocation as a milkman and should have been on the stage. He certainly was a natural raconteur. Dad likened him to Will Rogers; not that I ever knew Will Rogers. Before I was born he had died, like so many American entertainers, in a light aeroplane crash. I have seen some grainy, black and white film footage of him and from these I would have, perhaps unfairly, judged our milkman to be more talented.
Delivering milk to suburban Lansdowne where we lived was a relatively simple operation. Mr. Matthews owned and operated a small dairy farm a couple of miles away, as the crow flies, at Te Ore Ore. My best friend was his youngest son Donald, so I knew the property well. We would regularly go out to watch the cows having their fortifying liquid extracted. With milking machines; I am not talking dim dark ages here.
The milk destined for town supply was poured into large cans and taken in an old Bedford truck to the Matthews’ home at the top of Opaki Road where it was placed in the cool concrete shed at the back of the house. The milk sat in large vats immersed in cold water.
Some was separated to produce cream, but the unadulterated creamy milk was decanted into trendy cans and loaded into the yellow Morris Eight van and then off down the road with the bell ringing alerting customers to the fresh supply. Folk would come to their gates with billy’s in hand and Mr. Matthews would dispense the milk by ladling it out generously, offering homilies and humorous monologues in the process, and extracting a few pennies for his wares.
He worked in a competitive environment. Around the corner, in Totara Street, Mrs. Haxton kept cows in the paddocks behind her house. Those fields now form Lansdowne Crescent. She and her family milked the animals by hand and offered a gate supply at a slightly keener price.
I’ll swear the Walton family lived just down the road.
It was too good to last of course. What madness was this? Fresh milk and cream, still warm from the cow, being delivered daily to your door. Milk with cream on top that meant Creamota really was the breakfast of champions and extremely palatable. Cream that could be whipped up in less than a minute, was still fresh in the frig days later, and didn’t turn to water. How churlish of us to expect such luxuries to continue.
Greater minds prevailed and now they’ve got it all sorted. Wairarapa’s town milk suppliers have the milk picked up in giant tandem-tankers, every second day. These 40,000 litre juggernauts plough their way through the Manawatu Gorge, skirt the back streets of Palmerston North and then head out to Longburn to disperse the raw milk for further processing and refining so that it becomes an unrecognisable shadow of its former self.
At a time when our government borrows millions from overseas money-lenders to maintain our standard of living it makes good sense that the Swedish trucks, lit up like Christmas trees, crafted of American sourced stainless steel and riding on Japanese tyres, fueled by imported diesel should weave their way around the country, occasionally scattering motorists in their wake, so that you and I can have near-fresh milk eventually delivered to our supermarkets.
The old way, while giving the impression of sheer efficiency, could not possibly have been so. Otherwise, why would they change it?
Now packed in triple-skinned, non-biodegradable plastic containers that cause all sorts of havoc at the recycling centres, with clever caps and locking rings designed to choke your dog, the colourless, odourless, fatless, tasteless product is a triumph for those who regard blandness as a virtue.
There will be defenders of the modern way who will point out that the today’s product is more hygienic; sterilised and pasteurised. And yet the government dispensing agency, Pharmac, concluded a while back that too much sterilisation and the over-prescription of antibiotics have turned us into a nation of wuss’s, with no natural anti-bodies to ward off even the most minor of illnesses.
We can’t stop progress, but online shopping, without the imposition of 15 percent GST, could mean that retailers will soon be as scarce as milkmen.
Mr. Matthews used to drop his fresh milk off daily to the Masterton hospital. I can’t say of course that as far as I know, no-one died. Hundreds will have, but not because of the untreated milk, unless I am very much mistaken.
If he had been able to take time out to speak to some of the terminally ill, at least they would have died laughing.
Good night, John-Boy.
In 1950 I lived in an old villa style house in High Street, Kuripuni, Masterton. Our house fronted High Street and the back gate opened onto South Road. About 100 yards South on High Street was Ferris' Bakery. This little family business baked, on the premises in an old brick oven, the most mouth watering REAL bread I have ever tasted. It came in all shapes and sizes and the brown bread was brown for all the right reasons - nobody had even thought of artificially colouring bread in those days! A white or brown barracuda loaf cost 7 pence in old money. My mother nearly had a fit when old mother Ferris increased the price to seven and a half pence.
ReplyDeleteApproximately 100 yards South on South Road was Dawson's Dairy - a small dairy farming operation that sold virtually all of its production directly to the public, which consisted mainly of near residents. My first chore of the day was to walk over to Dawson's with a billy and and buy the daily milk supply. About every third day I would also buy a supply of fresh cream. I often had to wait until the milk came through the separator, still warm from the cow. As far as I can recall, the milk was about three pence per pint. It tasted magnificent!! I have very recently discovered a legitimate source of fresh milk near to where I now live and I'm looking forward to saying goodbye to that tasteless, white, nutritionless liquid masquerading as milk in the dairies and supermarkets.
Most food was REAL food in those days. We grew our own vegetables and had about a dozen chooks producing an abundance of free range eggs.
How times have changed.
Monty Zoomer