DELIVERING MILK AT AGE 16, AND THE MILK WAS IN GLASS BOTTLES

I often wondered why this fellow with a limp who was assigned to help me on my milk route always spent so much time when he went into a home to collect....

Fact of the matter was, often women would come to the door in scanty morning gowns and those were the days when it was not uncommon to run across thalidomide babies, children missing an arm or leg...
and our old truck rattled along in the river valley.
That was about forty nine years ago. I was sixteen.
And this was a nice job for a kid, but you had to be
tough. The twelve bottles of milk were heavy. And my friend with the limp liked to play tricks on me.
He was some twenty or more years older than me.
And whether he gave me a mix of chocolate milk and white milk, claiming the mix would give me a boost of energy...it did quite the opposite.

Now, the part of the story you were waiting for. And that is, why did the gent with the limp spend so much time collecting from the ladies on our route?
Well, I did not know it at the time, but he was quite
an energetic fellow (if you get the drift) and was simply...as he put it...looking after their needs...
but I was too young to even begin to understand that
such things went on behind closed doors. It puzzled me he looked like he was sweating so profusely after
a few collections....

But he was a charming gent. And I guess some of the single moms did not seem to mind his company....

In the meantime, the long summer days came to an end and after smashing a mirror on the bridge and losing a couple of containers of milk...it was suggested I might take a holiday...so I travelled out to Jasper National Park to spend the rest of that summer unloading boxcars...and that frozen meat was heavy...but that is another story...for another time...