Snow Storm

I grew up on a farm in Kent Hights that delivered milk to the door of our customers. This was done every day of the year regardless of snow, hurricanes or equipment failures. Whenever one of these things happened everyone pitched in to get things going. The delivery trucks were not 4-wheel-drive and each one had to have chains installed before loading. One of the big storms I remember dumped about 2 feet of snow by 3:30 A.M. when everyone showed up at the barn. After shoveling things out and taking care of the animals, three of us were assigned to each truck, along with a shovel. The route I went on had Uncle Charley, Cousin Ralph and me to deliver north of the farm into Providence. In those days very few of the streets got plowed. However, the street car tracks were always plowed. We all shoveled our way from the farm to Pawtucket Avenue onto the plowed tracks. This meant that when a street car came along we had to shovel a place to get the truck out of the way.

Uncle Charley would stay with the truck and Ralph and I would carry the bottles of milk up each street. On long streets we would each have a carrier in each hand. Getting through the snow with this load was, to say the least, very tiring. When we got into the East Side of Providence many of the streets were plowed and it was better going. We finally made it to the end of Wickenden Street and Uncle Charley took us into Jake’s Lunch. There for 15 cents we each got a bowl of kidney beans, a piece of toast and a cup of coffee and you could get a refill on the coffee. It was warm in Jake’s and Ralph and I had all we could do to keep from falling asleep and falling off the stool.

At the time, there were a good number of milk dealers in East Providence but there were only a few of them that had their own heard of cows. In spite of the fact that The Kent Farm had 60 head of cows plus 4 to 6 horses to care for, the customers got their milk before anyone else. This was because after delivering the milk my uncles had a full day of getting things ready for the next day and Ralph and I had to go to school.

And it was then 14 cents a quart delivered to the door.