Small Business & Milk...and ice

Certainly this will date me but time is flying anyway and I'm already older than the start of this post.  As a kid milk was delivered to our homes.  Everyone had a 'milk box' outside on their front porch.  The 'milkman' would stop the truck walk up to your house and leave milk and retrieve the empty bottles from the last visit.  I'm not sure how often they actually came by but neighbors with more children had bigger milk boxes and that was a source of pride.  We'd put frogs in the neighbors' milk boxes.

The more progressive milk trucks were refrigerated but some still kept products cool with ice.  We'd regularly, as kids on the street, where we most often played, would ask the drivers for ice which we'd suck on.  Freezers in home refrigerators were pretty small and marginal and you were lucky to produce usable ice cubes, summer was hot and there was no air conditioning.

At some point milk delivery people must have gone away.  It was probably the advent of the paper milk carton which eliminated the cycling of milk bottles and made grocery store milk more practical.  I'm only thinking about this today because we do go through a bit of milk at the small business.  People who ask for milk to drink get it in an 8 oz. plastic, sealed but recyclable container.  The espresso machine is where we glorify milk and produce some very nice lattes and mochas.

Normally we have milk on hand but we do run out.  Fortunately we have a Cub Grocery store about a block away but during busy times we head to SuperAmerica across the street.  When I was a kid my mother was always concerned that I'd get hit by a car on our no-traffic street.  She had her reasons.  Finally when reaching an age where crossing the street was allowed I was excited to be able to run with the other kids and beg for ice.

A couple of days ago in the midst of the lunch rush we ran out of milk.  Heading straight across the busy four lane street, not going seventy-five feet to the crossing, I heeded my mother's warnings from sixty years ago to look both ways and then look again and keep looking as you make your way across.  "Don't fall down or the cars won't see you!"  Not looking both ways attentively had left a large, never to be filled void in her life.  Crossing, I looked and looked going across and coming back.

As I filed my week's take of receipts for the remodeling project and for the small business I looked at this receipt and chuckled at 'Super Moo,' thought about the lack of ice, the evolution of one more occupation and service delivery business but also thought I'd take a moment to remind both of my children, now mature adults, to continue to look both ways, look again and keep looking...and don't fall down or the cars won't see you.