Aluminium milk bottle

Bought a copy of an old fashioned milk bottle today at a garage sale ($2). Cast aluminium, polished.

Walls are about 1/4" thick.

Anyone have one of these?

I doubt that it was a one-off.

Reply to
_
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Sounds like a carnival game bottle. The ones that we used to throw out of balance baseballs at and try to knock down.

Reply to
Gerry

Some of these for sale on ebay.

Looks like some were actually used for milk.

DOC

Reply to
doc

Only ones I've seen like that were on a carnie's game table. Glass is a whole lot cheaper to buy, and more to the point, you can SEE when it's not clean before filling, also how much is left in the bottle in the icebox. Some dairy somewhere probably tried them before figuring out in short order it was a Bad Idea. Just nowhere I've lived.

Stan( who remembers the milkman coming around when he was a kid)

Reply to
stans4

I remember him coming around with a horse drawn truck. Normanskill Dairy in Albany NY. They had tremendous Ice Cream. My uncle was plant engineer and always kept a good supply. He would bring home the stuff that came through when they changed flavors.

John

Reply to
John

Yep----glass bottles with cardboard stoppers. Cream that would climb out of the bottle as it froze on cold winter days.

Ours was a milk *Lady*. Hardest working old gal I ever met. Thin as a rail, and always wore bib overalls.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

In London in the early 1950's I just missed horse-drawn deliveries of milk: there was a battery powered "float" and the milkman walked in front, steering with the draw bar and operating the power with a trigger. However I do remember coal being delivered by horse, also the "rag and bone" man; in the suburbs he collected old clothes, furniture, and scrap metal. I'm sure this is one of the reasons I like coloured horses with feathers (so much so that I now have three of my own). They were still ploughing with oxen on my first visit to rural France in the 1970s.

Reply to
Newshound

On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:28:28 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "Harold and Susan Vordos" quickly quoth:

I stopped to ask directions of a UPS driver the other day and was extremely pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a gorgeous Filipina woman in the little brown suit. She couldn't have been as much 100 lbs or even 5' tall but she tossed boxes around just fine.

She gave me directions to the Fairfield, CA Ford dealership. The guy I bought my F-150 from a mere 16 years ago is no longer in business. I guess he retired at age 80 or something. Wimp. ;)

- Metaphors Be With You -

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Hey, Larry. How's that area doing these days? I used to live in Fairfield and Vacaville when I was stationed at Travis in the 60's and

70's and the last time I was up that way in 1988 I hardly recognized the place. The little glider port between Vacaville and Fairfield, where I learned to fly, was no more and there were houses all over the place.

Jim Chandler Apple Valley

Reply to
Jim Chandler

The ice man as well. Cousin and I got our pea shooters confiscated, and our asses warmed for aiming at the ice man's horse. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

In Victoria BC, they reverted to horse drawn milk deliveries in 1939, due to fuel rationing. This continued until 1947/48. Then they went back to trucks (lorries). By the sixties, home delivery was finished.

Steve R.

Reply to
Steve R.

On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:00:53 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, Jim Chandler quickly quoth:

I didn't recognize the place at all, though I hadn't been there since '90 when I bought my truck. You surely wouldn't recognize anything but the Travis AFB offramp. The traffic through there goes at a nice clip, but more traffic goes one way on 80 in an hour than it does on both sides of I-5 here (Grants Pass, OR) in a couple days.

I'm glad to be back out of that madness for the next 51 weeks.

- Metaphors Be With You -

Reply to
Larry Jaques

snip------

Just goes to show you can't trust anyone!

H
Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

Reply to
Ray Field

_ wrote in article ...

In the heyday of milk delivery, and milk bottles, aluminum was still considered to be an exotic - spelled "E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E" - metal.

I cannot imagine any incentive for aluminum bottles over refillable glass during that era.

Your bottle could have been cast more recently then rapidly "aged" at various county fairs around the country.

Reply to
*

Newshound wrote in article ...

In the U.S.A.......just a few decades ago.......

Twice-a-day mail delivery.....

The knife and scissor-sharpening man who rolled through the neighborhood once-a-month with his mobile sharpening shop.......

Utility workers pouring out a king's ransom in silver (lead) for eager kids to take home and play with......

Mosquito-control workers riding around on three-wheel Harleys, spraying storm drains......

The ice man chopping off splinters of ice for the gaggle of kids following them around on a hot, summer day....... unflavored, of course.........

Door-to-door salesmen selling brushes, vacuum cleaners, etc.................

The real "Duncan yo-yo man" - not Tommy Smothers - doing tricks and teaching kids how to "walk the dog", in front of the local toy store........

Lavish electric train layouts in toy departments at larger city department stores around Christmas......

Cops "walking a beat" on Main Street.............

Firemen showing off their trucks, and giving kids the opportunity to slide down the brass pole in fire stations......

The highly-risque sing-along song, "Pink Pajamas....".............Glory, glory what a helluva way to die.........

The corner soda fountain........often located in a drug store........

The tranquility of Main Street on Sunday when ALL the stores were closed.........

Flathead Fords...........

Reply to
*

How did the "milk" bottle game work?

I'm guessing the aluminum bottles were painted white, and filled inside with loose lead shot, so even a direct hit with the baseball would tend not to knock them off the platform. As I remember, you had to not just hit them or tip them over, but push them all off a rather broad pedestal. The "bottles" would have been quite dense and heavy versus the corky baseball, and the lead shot would quickly deaden all the energy when they rolled, like a dead-blow hammer. The aluminum would have been used because it was durable and lightweight, since you want as much mass as possible loosely filling the center of the object.

Interesting engineering problem. How to maximize the "deadness" of a target while giving the illusion of easy pickin's. The milk-bottle masquerade makes a strong suggestion that initially tricks you into believing it's something it's not.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

A carnival operator friend once told me that unnoticeable changes in where the bottles were set on the table could determine whether or not they went off the table when hit. The operator could show you how easy it was, then make it nearly impossible.

Don Young

Reply to
Don Young

Firemen still show off their trucks on a regular basis, and in San Francisco they still have the nice brass fire poles in actual use. I don't know if they let the kids slide down them however.

Reply to
Roger Shoaf

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