milk machines – Lee Duigon

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It used to be a common sight in our town–the milk machine. Stores weren’t open at night, or on Sundays; but if you ran out of milk, there was always a milk machine a few blocks away.

Now there aren’t any.

A milk machine featured in one of the best days of my boyhood. The machine was a block from our middle school, and it rested on a wooden platform.

One day, passing by, we discovered that much of the platform had rotted through and broken off. Light bulb flashes over three kids’ heads! Digging into the soft earth that used to be covered by the platform, we unearthed a treasure trove of quarters. Wow! Instant wealth! I can’t remember how much money we dug up; but after who knows how many years of people dropping quarters and seeing them vanish into the cracks between the planks, I think it was the most money I had ever had in my life, so far. Kids didn’t go walking around with $20 bills, back then. If I had 20 cents in my pocket, I was doing okay.

I don’t remember how long it took me to spend those quarters; but I’m sure I had a good time doing it.

Wow! How many of us grew up drinking this?

For those spring chickens under 50, I am about to speak in mysteries.

The main use for Bosco was to stir it into milk, which encouraged kids to drink it. Milk in those sweet days came in bottles and was delivered to your house by the milkman, who took the empties from the milk-box on your doorstep and replaced them with whatever your order was.

If you just had to have milk that wasn’t in a glass bottle, you could get it in cartons from milk machines. In our town there was a milk machine every several blocks. I loved those! Milk was a quarter, and the machines were on these wooden platforms–which, after a number of years, would rot and have to be replaced. But before the dairy company could put on a new platform, all you needed was a jackknife or a sharp stick, and you were rich, rich, rich! It was amazing how many quarters slipped out of people’s fingers and through the cracks in the platform. Bosco, schmosco! Gimme a rotted-out milk machine platform any day. An hour’s poking around down there was better than an extra birthday!

Well, yeah, the Bosco was nice, too.

Cool piece of trivia: Bosco syrup was used to simulate blood in two black-and-white movie classics: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

I’m glad nobody told me that in 1959.