Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-11-09
|RETIRES. AT 9,
RISES AT / A. M.
He Even Learns to Work in
His Sleep on Occasions;
Is a Real Veteran.

\ Perhaps you have never Seen him.
For there are many customers that
Xhe mifkman has never seen, al
though he has been leaving milk on
their back doorsteps for many
months. He comes around to many
houses in the earliest hours OF the
morning, and if you are staid ami
middle nothing short of a
death in the family would keep you
awake until that hour. You may
never see that man who places the
milk there every morning, rain or
shine, hot or cold
Do you know what it means to
peddle milk? To peddle milk, to
possess a milk route all your own
and to work it on the one-man plan
/ IS the most heart breaking toll that
can be imagined. Here is the pro-
gram followed by man who did
that very thing. did it for many
years and now that he has stopped.
cften regrets that he is not still do
ing it.
Out of Bed at A. M.
Every morning the year round he
was out OF bed at O'Clock. He
would go out to feed his horse, and
then prepare himself breakfast
while his faithful steed was eating.
1t is that happy season OF the
year that is not too hot or too cold,
as soon as he has eaten he can
hitch the horse to the wagon and
start away. If, on the other hand,
it is in the hot weather, the milk
must be kept on ice until the last
moment. This means getting up
even earlier. for the milk must be
taken off the ice and the wagon
loaded. This means at least an
other half hour. The same thing
holds true in the winter. The milk
must be kept i'll place that is sui
fciently warm to keep it from
freezing until time to start out on
the road, and this, too, means load
ing the wagon in the bitter cold of
the early morning. Even at that it
may freeze and you may find three
inches of frozen milk jutting from
the top of your bottle.
Then, after he has started, from
the time the house of his first Gus
toner is reached, he must start on
the run and keep up his pace until
the last customer\is supplied. This
man had milk route on which he
sold about $50 quarts each day.
That meant that if he got on the
road by 2 O'Clock, or 2:30 at the lat
est, he would not. be able to get
back home until after 9 o'clock.
Not Like Good Old Days.
In the old days, when, everyone
put a pail on the back porch and
the milk1nan poured milk into it
from can, the proposition of clear
ing up after the days business was
comparatively easy, but nowadays,
when everyone takes milk in bottles,
it means that in addition to washing
all the cans and thoroughly steriliz-
ing them, all the bottles must be
washed-more than 800 of them a
day-on a route of fair size.
@ A route of that size will not
4 finance machine for washing bot
ties, SO each one of them must be
washed painstakingly by hand, and
sterilized the same way. By the
time that is finished it is noon. After
dinner there may be short respite
in which the hard-pushed milkman
can get about two hours sleep.
Then he is up and at it again. The
milk to be sold the next day must
Be collected from the farmers and
bottled.
This takes most of the afternoon,
for again the size of the plant is
handicap. A large bottling ma
chine-that is, one that will fill tour
OF more bottles at a time, is usually
beyond the reach of the small milk
man, 50 that they must all be filed
one at a time. Not long ago This