A jaunt down memory lane....
Nov. 29th, 2018 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaI was just drifting off to sleep when a gasp jolted me back to consciousness. The power had gone out & with it, my Cpap. As I cannot sleep without it, I grabbed a recent copy of the Nation & trotted off to the kitchen for a flashlight and a cup of tea (earl grey, hot). A call to PG&E said power back by 5AM. It was 10 after 1. Gonna be a long night. I settled into the couch.
After a bit, the vanilla ice cream in the freezer started calling my name, and no sooner did I hear it’s siren song, the microwave chirped, signaling the return of power. I shut the flashlight, flipped on the overhead in the kitchen and got out a small bowl for ice cream.
Umpqua. It’s a creamery in central Oregon with good quality ice cream. Not organic, but a minimal number of ingredients and nothing more ersatz than carrageenan. You can even see tiny flecks of vanilla bean. It’s a retro styled waxed cardboard tub with a copy of their 1931 logo on one side and a photo of a milkman stepping out of a home delivery truck circa 1960.
1960. Memorial Day weekend that year, my family moved into a brand spanking new attached row house in Brooklyn. My folks were both on the cusp of 30, with 2 pre-schoolers and #3 well on the way. Yeah, I’m old enough to remember the milkman. There was a metal cool box on the front porch just outside the front door. Just about everyone on our street had one. Three or four times a week the milkman delivered, usually before dawn. There were quart glass bottles of regular milk, rectangular heavily waxed paper cartons of skimmed milk, containers of cottage cheese, and pot cheese, and cardboard cartons of eggs. Cream and half & half were available, not that we ordered those. Oh, and butter! Occasionally in winter, it was cold enough that things froze in that cold box. Still, it was a lovely convenience, and I often took it upon myself to be into the dairy in from the porch and put it away. Sadly, by the time I was 7 or 8, the dairy cancelled their home delivery service; thereafter a mile and a half round trip to the A&P became routine a few times a week.
Remember seltzer squirt bottles? Think Three Stooges movies from the 30’s. Well there were home delivery of those available too. My folks didn’t indulge, but my paternal grandparents did. There was always a crate with a dozen squirt bottles in the corner of grandma’s kitchen. The Ubet’s Chocolate syrup was delivered by the same seltzer service, & that was kept squirreled away in the back of the icebox. The water delivery service survived longer that the milkman by almost a decade. I can remember those squirt bottles at Grandma’s thru my junior year in high school.
My grandparents each lived in large apartment buildings in Flatbush, each just off of King’s Highway, mom’s parents in a 6 story building with a dozen flats each floor, while my father’s folks were in a larger building a mile further west, also 6 stories, but 28 flats per floor. That place felt like a citadel, taking up 1/2 of a full city block. My own parents lived on the first floor of that fortress for the first few years of their marriage. Mom was not especially happy right under her in-laws noses.
The shopping area is Kings Highway laid right between my grandparents’ apartments. It was a solidly Jewish emigrant neighborhood, where you heard as much Yiddish on the streets as English, back in the day. Much of the marketing was done in specialty stores. Yes, there was a supermarket just off Kings Highway near the elevated train station that was midway between my grandparents, but mostly, they went shop to shop, fruit and veggies from the green grocer, fish from the fishmonger, poultry and meats at the butcher, bagels, bialys and rye from the bagel bakery (which was not the same as the ordinary bakery, where there were cakes and pastries).
Enough navel gazing. It’s time I went to sleep.
After a bit, the vanilla ice cream in the freezer started calling my name, and no sooner did I hear it’s siren song, the microwave chirped, signaling the return of power. I shut the flashlight, flipped on the overhead in the kitchen and got out a small bowl for ice cream.
Umpqua. It’s a creamery in central Oregon with good quality ice cream. Not organic, but a minimal number of ingredients and nothing more ersatz than carrageenan. You can even see tiny flecks of vanilla bean. It’s a retro styled waxed cardboard tub with a copy of their 1931 logo on one side and a photo of a milkman stepping out of a home delivery truck circa 1960.
1960. Memorial Day weekend that year, my family moved into a brand spanking new attached row house in Brooklyn. My folks were both on the cusp of 30, with 2 pre-schoolers and #3 well on the way. Yeah, I’m old enough to remember the milkman. There was a metal cool box on the front porch just outside the front door. Just about everyone on our street had one. Three or four times a week the milkman delivered, usually before dawn. There were quart glass bottles of regular milk, rectangular heavily waxed paper cartons of skimmed milk, containers of cottage cheese, and pot cheese, and cardboard cartons of eggs. Cream and half & half were available, not that we ordered those. Oh, and butter! Occasionally in winter, it was cold enough that things froze in that cold box. Still, it was a lovely convenience, and I often took it upon myself to be into the dairy in from the porch and put it away. Sadly, by the time I was 7 or 8, the dairy cancelled their home delivery service; thereafter a mile and a half round trip to the A&P became routine a few times a week.
Remember seltzer squirt bottles? Think Three Stooges movies from the 30’s. Well there were home delivery of those available too. My folks didn’t indulge, but my paternal grandparents did. There was always a crate with a dozen squirt bottles in the corner of grandma’s kitchen. The Ubet’s Chocolate syrup was delivered by the same seltzer service, & that was kept squirreled away in the back of the icebox. The water delivery service survived longer that the milkman by almost a decade. I can remember those squirt bottles at Grandma’s thru my junior year in high school.
My grandparents each lived in large apartment buildings in Flatbush, each just off of King’s Highway, mom’s parents in a 6 story building with a dozen flats each floor, while my father’s folks were in a larger building a mile further west, also 6 stories, but 28 flats per floor. That place felt like a citadel, taking up 1/2 of a full city block. My own parents lived on the first floor of that fortress for the first few years of their marriage. Mom was not especially happy right under her in-laws noses.
The shopping area is Kings Highway laid right between my grandparents’ apartments. It was a solidly Jewish emigrant neighborhood, where you heard as much Yiddish on the streets as English, back in the day. Much of the marketing was done in specialty stores. Yes, there was a supermarket just off Kings Highway near the elevated train station that was midway between my grandparents, but mostly, they went shop to shop, fruit and veggies from the green grocer, fish from the fishmonger, poultry and meats at the butcher, bagels, bialys and rye from the bagel bakery (which was not the same as the ordinary bakery, where there were cakes and pastries).
Enough navel gazing. It’s time I went to sleep.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-29 02:54 pm (UTC)