[p. 2] eight quarts each was the usual quantity he delivered.
The milkmen usually wore a long blue frock, and jumped from the wagon steps with big can in one hand and a tin quart measure in the other, leaving the horse, who had learned the route, to stop at his own sweet will, which depended somewhat upon the proximity of the next customer's house.
In cold weather that quart measure varied a little as the mercury lowered toward zero, doubtless adding to the milkman's profits, and some canny housewives were known to kindly furnish some boiling water before receiving their daily supply, thriftily saving the mixture obtained for the family pig,—perhaps.
Beside the kitchen door was the printed ‘milk score,’ with blank spaces numbered up to thirty-one, in which the milkman marked any ‘extra milk’ supplied.
Among
Mr. Ober's customers was the famous Mystic Hall Seminary, though it had a few cows of its own. The price at that time was five cents per quart, but during the war rose to twelve cents.
No inconsiderable number of householders kept cows of their own and supplied a neighbor or two with milk.
The writer recalls his own experience, in the early morning of his first day of housekeeping, of going to a neighbor a quarter mile away (West Medford was thinly settled then), pitcher in hand, ere breakfast for two was served.
The four cents paid for that pint of milk was the first item (after the parson's fee) of his household expense.
Before evening a regular supply was engaged from another neighbor who had, besides a cow, several boys who distributed the surplus of milk on their way to school.
After a few years we, too, found a cow—‘a good thing to have in the family,’ which had increased somewhat— and also supplied some neighbors.
Several others did likewise, till there came to be too much quarrel over the free pasturage we depended on, and we reluctantly parted with old ‘Brindle,’ and called in the regular milkman again.
This was in 1880, when more than a dozen cows
