Milk Round

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Alreadyin Kirkcaldy dad decided that being in business meant the literalapplication of Benjamin Franklin's aphorism "early to be early torise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise" . He had the example ofmy uncle Bill to follow who had moved out of the pits and into milkdelivery a few years before in the village of Salin in central Fife.Working with the local dairy he developed a circuit of customersaround the village and outlaying hamlets and delivered fresh milk tothem daily.


Inthose days, before the introduction of Ultra High Temperaturepasteurisation, milk was a perishable commodity and had to be usedmore or less the same day. It was a completely natural product. Cowswere milked in the evening and the churns of milk picked up overnightto be cooled and bottled in the dairy and delivered to the doorstepin time for breakfast the morning. It was quite a different productfrom today's milk with at least an inch of cream on the top ofevery pint. This to the delight of rice pudding lovers everywhere andthe blue tit population who used to peck their way through the silvermilk tops to get to cream while the bottle stood on the doorstep.


Deliveringmilk then was a hard job. You had to get up early in the morningevery day of the year, rain, hale or snow, with the possibleexception of Christmas and New Years day. At the same timedeliveries were over by 8:30 a.m. and after the empties were returnedto the dairy for washing, the delivery man's working day was overby 10:00 a.m.


Mydad saw this then as the ideal job to complement to his grocers shopbusiness. With mum available to open the shop at 9:00, dad couldstart his day at 4:30a.m., make the milk deliveries and join mum inthe shop by 10:00a.m. until it closed at 6:00p.m. Dad took this onwhen he was already 47 years old.


Theformula must have worked well in Kirkcaldy because when we moved toBuckhaven in 1958 dad continued with a new milk round at the sametime as he took over a licensed grocers shop he had bought inSandwell street.


Inthe 50's and 60's it was still normal, particularly in ruralareas, for children to participate in economic life. They even gottime off school to help bring in the harvest in most countryvillages. From the age of eleven or twelve most boys would find somekind of paid activity that would take up an hour to two a day eitherdelivering groceries after school or newspapers or milk in themorning before school. It provided them with pocket money and taughtthem the discipline of simply turning up on time for work and doingwhat you were told.


Mydad had two boys to help him out with his deliveries.


Oneday, when one of the boys had told dad that he had had enough of theearly hours and the rotten weather, mum and dad had a conversation inthe kitchen about whether I would make a good replacement. I had justturned 12 and was about the right age for my initiation into childlabour. Need-less-to-say mum was not in favour of the idea. She had avery clear perception of me as a rather frail sort, fussy about mostthings and not of the rough cut needed to stand up to the ardours ofsuch a tough job. Not yet anyway. Dad thought it would do me theworld of good for more or less the same reasons. Surprisingly enoughmum actually agreed to ask me what I thought and I of course leapt atthe opportunity to participate in such an adventure and to proveindeed that I had come of age.


Idon't remember much of the details of my first day on the job but Ido retain an indelible recollection of the elation that I felt atbeing out in the street at 5:00 in the morning with everyone else inthe world still asleep. Pitch black the night was but the sky crystalclear, alight with its winter constellations closer than ever before.It must also have been extremely cold but I have no recollection ofthis.

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Wedrove the mile or so to the dairy in dad's Hillman minx and setabout immediately the complex tax of getting the diesel engine of themilk van to start. Unlike petrol cars, I discovered, diesels need abit of encouragement to get started in the morning especially insubzero temperatures. The technique at the time, before preheaterswere invented, was to spray some lighter fuel into the air intake andthe set fire to it. This created an impressive deflagration andhopefully heated the cylinders enough for the diesel to ignite whenit was pumped in next. Generally the process needed to be repeatedseveral times with increasingly spectacular pyrotechnics andassociated curses before the engine eventually burst into life.


Weloaded up the back of the van with waiting crates of milk and droveoff to pick up the other milk boy who worked the delivery round withdad. His name was Tom Kirkcaldy and he lived near by. Tom was in myclass at Braehead but since we had not gone to the same primaryschool together, I did not know him very well. It turned out thoughthat the milk round would turn us into good friends over the three orfour years that we worked together.


Thereare many stories which I could tell you from my milk round days but Iwill try to focus on just a couple of those that really marked me therest of my life.


Probablythe most important lesson I learned from the milk round is that thekindness and generosity you receive from people tends to be ininverse proportion to their situation.


Mostof the people we delivered milk to were working class and many ofthem poor. Buckhaven was a mining town but in the 60's the mineswere already in decline and there were many households where therewas no longer a steady wage coming in.


Itwas not unusual on a Saturday, when we used to go round our customersagain in the afternoon to collect the milk money, for people to askif they could pay their milk bill next week since their husband wasout of work. This occurred to me on one occasion when a sicklylooking young mother answered the door to me with a baby on her arm.She apologised that her husband had just lost his job and that shecouldn't afford to pay the milk money this week. "Please tellyour dad that I'll pay him double next week and here's somethingfor you." she pushed a thrupenny bit into my hand and sent me offgently, closing the door behind. I ran back to the van and told mydad what had happened and that she had given me a thrupenny bit. True to form my dad said "Well you can take the thrupence back toher and tell her that if she can't afford to pay her milk bill shecan't afford to tip you either". Some lessons you never forget.


Atthe other extreme we were collecting the milk money from a moreselect part of town on Friday evening in the pouring rain. To thisparticular house, which was a free standing stone built mansion Idelivered one pint of milk a day and at 7d½ a pint that made 4s11d½per week for seven days of milk delivery - a ½ d short of 5s. Theold lady who came out to pay me gave me two half crowns (5s) andstood at the door and watched me run through the rain to the van andback her halfpenny change.






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scameour but quite and a sickly looking lady opened the door to me and


MILKROUND

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