Rob Rattenbury: Home milk deliveries are a thing of the past and that’s a shame

As a milk boy, Rob Rattenbury's day began at 4am. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

Miss two-year-old visits with big sister often nowadays. She has a set system in place when arriving. Run in, race around, hugs for granny and poppa then it starts. Milk poppa. Chocolate poppa. Crackers poppa. Yoghurt poppa. Ice cream granny. Then it’s on to creating two-year-old havoc.

Milk, the stuff that helps to pretty much pay our way as a country.

My earliest memories are of milk, of lying in bed at my grandmother’s hearing the early morning soft clip-clop of hooves and the tinkle of glass as the horse-drawn milk float makes its way along the street, just at an amble so that the milkman can keep up at a slow jog. 1950s New Zealand, not that long ago.

Then primary school with the state-supplied half pint of milk for each child, a great scheme introduced by the first Labour government to help improve the health of New Zealand children and to use surplus milk. It ran from 1937 to 1967, every primary school gate in the land had its milk stand where the crates would be delivered in the wee hours from a special school milk truck. Every school had milk monitors, those sensible but strong kids who went and picked up the class crate from the gate, delivering it into the classroom where the box of straws would be produced and milk drunk.

Yes, it was sometimes warm in summer. In winter it may be used by teachers to make cocoa to warm their little charges up.

We were surrounded by milk. Families were large then and most families took between four and six pints of milk per day with perhaps a bottle of cream on weekends for a special treat.

Milk was cheap in those days, even by the standards of the time, 4c per pint.

As a young teenager, one of my first outside-of-school jobs was as a milk boy for our local milkmen, two brothers, old characters who covered most of our suburb, hundreds of homes, between them, employing local lads aged 13 to 15. No girls. Girls were welcome but I do not remember any when I was involved.

Heavy metal crates containing 20 pints of milk in glass bottles, five to six crates to a trolley, loaded from the truck by growing boys. Then pushed around the neighbourhood at pace, delivering milk, always racing to catch up for the next truck stop. It made us fit and quite strong, those crates were very heavy for a 13 year old. $1.25 per day for about three hours work in the morning before school.

Rising about 4am to make one’s way through quiet suburban streets to meet the other boys and the boss when he arrived from the milk treatment station with his old Bedford truck crammed to the gunwhales, 120 to 140 crates of milk, crates of cream, fruit juice and yoghurt, all in glass bottles.

We had to handle money and give change so honesty was a prerequisite; you never let another boy near your money can just in case.

A lot of milk was drunk back then. A pint of milk was cheap compared to a small, maybe a third of a pint, bottle of Coca-Cola at about 10c, a luxury in those days. One family I delivered to went through 12 to 15 pints per day, a big family.

About 15 years later, arriving in Whanganui, we were a bit short of the readies at the time. So I did what I always did as a young man, went and got a second job. I acted as a relief driver for local milkman John Holloway for a couple of years delivering milk to parts of Whanganui East, Bastia Hill, Durie Hill and Putiki. I had my own set of boys by then, three or four 13 and 14-year-old lads, still no girls. Strong fit young men; reminded me of my mates and I as kids.

The run was smaller than the run I worked in my hometown, less milk was carried and, by then we were using plastic crates. Everything was still bottled in glass though but a lot dearer to buy.

But the work was the same, delivering milk to families and homes throughout the run in the late afternoon and early evenings. Chatting to people out and about, watching the boys around the traffic, ordering product for the next day at the treatment station in Whanganui East, loading and unloading the truck. A decent way to make a reasonable living, healthy too.

Home milk deliveries are a thing of the past now. A shame really as it was a bit of an institution having a milk box, a hand-crate to put out each night with tokens or change, getting the milk in for breakfast, first to get the cream on top.

Memories.