One of the jobs I had while attending Kent State University was delivering milk for Fenn Dairy in Kent. I would start at 4 AM on a school day and work until noon, at which time I would drive over to the university and attend class. I usually didn’t have time to change clothes so I looked more like a milkman than a college student. Around that time (1951) tuition at KSU was $40 per quarter!
After awhile for various reasons I quit school and began working full time. I now had a job as “swing man” at the dairy. This involved my learning all of the routes and taking over for the regular driver when he became ill or went on vacation. It was a difficult job and quite challenging since I had to learn the routes, the amount of each product to drop off, where to leave it, etc. It was quite rewarding monetarily since I earned 110 percent of the regular driver’s salary.
One of the wholesale routes was particularly challenging. It involved driving over 100 miles in a large refrigerated truck and delivering dairy products to super markets as well as small “mom and pop” stores. It was very physical since it involved literally carrying tons of milk into stores each day and getting back to the dairy in time to load the truck for the following day’s delivery.
I envied some of the other delivery men. I would often see two big guys assigned to a bread truck, each man carrying a loaf or two of bread or a package of cookies into a store, while little old 140 pound me was struggling with a 55 pound case of milk in each hand.
Running the retail routes was less physical since the volume was much smaller, there was less lifting, and less distance was covered. On these routes we delivered to private homes, fraternities, sororities, railroad workers bunk houses, or factories, depending on which route was run.
The retail milk was delivered in glass bottles, the lid was pressed onto the top and held by friction. If left outside too long in the winter the milk would sometimes freeze, but the bottles wouldn’t break since the expansion of the frozen milk would just push out the cap making a tubular-shaped appendage of frozen milk sticking out the top of the bottle. It was quite a sight to see the neighborhood cats standing around these bottles having a few licks of those delicious frozen milk-sickles.
Milksickles
Some of the houses had boxes in which to place the milk. I remember one in particular that was built into the side of the house with a hinged door on the outside. It also had a door on the inside so that the owner could retrieve the milk from within the house. The only problem for me was that their little dog sometimes used this box as a bed, and every time I tried to deposit the milk, that little yapper tried to take off my arm.
I think those wild folk tales that one hears about the milkman and the housewives on his route are somewhat exaggerated. Most of the excitement I had was trying to keep ahead of the neighborhood dogs who were constantly snapping at my ass. However I do remember one time when delivering to a super market, the “vegetable girl” followed me into the milk cooler and closed the door. Unfortunately I was so pressed for time I couldn’t do much about it.
One of my biggest challenges was learning to drive a Divco. These were small “stand-up-and-drive” delivery trucks built in Detroit. Learning to drive one was a unique experience.
Divcos
Here is how it went:
There was one pedal on the floor and no seat. When the pedal was partially depressed it acted as a clutch. When pushed all the way down it was a brake. There was a T-shaped gear shift lever on the steering column. While shifting, the throttle was operated by twisting the end of the gear shift lever.
Combination clutch and brake pedal
Divco Thottle
But wait, there’s more –
If the shift lever was in the neutral position and the pedal was depressed all the way to the floor, it stayed down and acted like a parking brake. If you pushed the pedal too far down while shifting, the truck came to a sudden, screeching halt.
There’s still more!
These little beasts didn’t have synchro-mesh transmissions so they had to be double-clutched when shifting. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to double-clutch standing up! If you missed a gear, you just had to stop and start over.
Since we had to step in and out of the truck so frequently, we normally drove with both doors open. One day I was driving my little Divco down South Water Street with a load of milk in glass bottles. I had the little devil wound up tight in second gear and was in the process of shifting to third. When I attempted to double-clutch I pushed the pedal too far, the parking brake engaged and the truck came to a sudden, violent stop – bottles flying out of both doors. Nick Stefen, the local policeman, came along and stopped both lanes of traffic while the embarrassed driver (me) cleaned up the mess.
Then there was the snow in winter. During the delivery process snow built up on the truck floor. This quickly turned to ice and the driver was constantly sliding around in it. Since the only thing to hold on to was the steering wheel, it made steering quite a challenge. Sometimes we looked like hula dancers while driving down the street sliding around on the slippery floor holding on to the steering wheel and trying to keep the truck between the ditches. One of the drivers when making a left turn, slid on the icy floor, tripped over the drive-shaft housing, and flew out the right-hand door.
I had driven large trucks, high lifts, bulldozers and other heavy equipment while working in the strip mine but I never operated anything so tricky to learn as those little stand-up-and-drive Divcos. Once mastered however, they provided a very fast and efficient way to deliver milk.
Because I had dropped out of school I eventually lost my deferment and was drafted to serve in Korea (see previous posts).
After coming back from overseas I decided to say good bye to Fenn Dairy and return to college to pursue other adventures. Fenn Dairy closed its doors around 1965. The building was purchased by The Record Publishing Company.
Many years later Tom Gregory, a friend and former student of mine, found this bottle in a dump outside of Kent, OH.
The Fenn Dairy building several years after closing
Todd Fenn – Owner Fenn Dairy c. 1953