Joy Cooksey of Harrington remembers when “milkmen (C8) working in Sydney in the 1940s,collected the milk buckets left on front door step and filled them with the milk being carried by their horse-drawn carts.”
Lance Dover of Pretty Beach remembers it too,but for all the wrong reasons:“I have memories of our Eastwood milkman’s horse trotting along with its cartload of milk churns,but most vividly recall my normally calm and collected mother chiding the milkman after catching him in the act of adding a top-up of water to the milk billy. She’d suspected for some time that the pale blue surface on the milk jug was water,and she was right. He was unwise enough to use the tap under my parents’ bedroom window.”
“My grandmother had an arrangement with the ice man (C8) that she always got ‘old’ ice,” recounts John McIntyre of Port Macquarie. “It was held that old ice melted more slowly than recently made ice. OK,old-timers and scientists,could this be true?”
Robyn Lewis of Raglan notes that there has been much discussion regarding corflutes (C8) for tomorrow’s election:“It pays to have a flattering picture of the candidate. During a recent state election,I witnessed two first-time voters who decided to vote for someone because he had ‘a cool haircut’. Democracy at its best.”
“Growing up in Fairfield in the ’60s,we always had the luxury of a sewer connection,” says a relieved Michael Johnston of Corlette. “Not so at Nan’s place in neighbouring Smithfield,where I would rise in the early hours to watch in fascination the man affectionately known as the ‘dunnycarter’,hoist the full tin (C8) onto his shoulder and empty it into his truck. He was always whistling while exhaling and inhaling. I now realise this was probably a useful technique to avoid inhaling the vapours through his nose.”
“It’s pleasing to know that my diet is working,” crows Peter Miniutti of Ashbury. “My security camera now identifies me as ‘person seen in driveway’ instead of ‘vehicle seen in driveway’.” We always said you were a big wheel,Peter.
Moving on from plentiful lobster (C8),Peter Jeffery of Garran (ACT) writes:“My Mum (96 years old) visited relatives in Hay in the 1930s,and would be given white bread sandwiches filled with slabs of Murray cod to eat on the trip back home. ‘Delicious’,she claims.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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