Posted by Delfina
on 6/26/2009, 11:00 am, in reply to "Mike"
There were no coal trucks in my neighborhood when I was a kid - all the houses had enormous oil-burning (According to Nana, they were "earl-boining") furnaces in the basements. Each house had a standpipe in the far back corner of the front yard for oil delivery - each standpipe covered by a different foot-tall cast iron figure - ours was a Scottie dog standing on its hind legs. That scottie was my snow gauge - if he was covered by snow, YAY! - we'd have a snow day off from school!0
I remember the vegetable man's truck - no horses - with the swinging scale, and the knife sharpener's truck with its screeching wheel on the back. And the milkman with his little metal carrier basket for the quart glass milk bottles with the paper caps that would lift as the cream rose to the top. I saw one of those metal bottle carriers recently in an antiques mall - cost a fortune. And the butter (salted or unsalted) wrapped in waxed paper.
I remember the flatbed trucks with the little rides - a whip, a miniature carousel, or sometimes a tiny roller coaster ... and the man with the camera and the pony ... and the occasional organ grinder with a monkey. I never liked the organ grinder - too many stories from my grandmother about how organ grinders were "always" gypsies who especially liked to steal little blonde girls with blue eyes.
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