New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Soda Jerker
A soda jerk would serve libation at a soda fountain at an apothecary or drugstore. Say what?
Once upon a time, the drugstore was the place to pick up your mail, some groceries and your medicine. Of course, if you were a kid, you looked forward to mom running these errands, because every drugstore had a soda fountain. One could pick amongst a number of flavors for your soda or ice cream float.
The soda jerk, was often a teenager or young man who would pull or “jerk” the lever or spigot to mix the soda (carbonation) and water which were on two separate taps – after putting in the flavored syrup of your choice. Some soda jerks attracted clientele by their showmanship or flair that they would exhibit while preparing the soda.
The last place I recall being served by a soda jerk at a soda fountain was at Woolworth’s Five & Dime.
Honorary mention should be made of the milliner or hatter, haberdasher, telephone operator, and street sweepers. What era did you grow up and what services to recall and miss?
My grandfather Thomas Hartnett was a milkman in Westport/Fall River before WWII ( Read Dairy?) . That is how he met my grandma , Marie Antoinette Antaya. He drove fast. She never looked before crossing from the factory. He nearly hit her. They swore in French and English. Married 42 years, death do they part.
My father Richard Proulx was my mother’s ( Patricia Hartnett) paperboy before they met. So much for social media! Good jobs for their time.
I seem to remember in the early 50’s the milk bottles having paper tops. In the winter the bottles would freeze and break on our back porch. In first grade with Miss Webb the milk bottles had pull up tabs to insert your straw. (1956)
Remember every one of these things! Early 60’s, used to be a milkman for Salvadors Dairy in Dartmouth MA. The ice cream stand is still operational in the summer! Very popular place! At that time, all the ice cream was made at the dairy!
Worked on a Gulf Hill Dairy milk truck on Saturday (5AM-1PM) schlepping milk bottles up tenements for just $2 ($.25/hr) and a few containers of chocolate milk. I’m both ashamed I got so little and proud of my work ethic. Luckily I had a Standard-Times paper route too.
The corner drug store fountain got a lot of my earned money, places like Lincoln Drugs in the north end. I was very fond of the Lime Rickey’s there.
I remember all of those. In addition; the rag man who came around in horse drawn Cart to collect rags, egg delivery, coal delivery, grocery delivery from neighborhood market, house deliveries from Cushmans Bakery. Good old times
Can’t forget the “pony boy” who traveled the streets and offered ice cream and creamsicles and popsicles and we got to pet the pony, to boot. Also the ” ice man” who delivered the ice and would chip off a chunk for us kids to eat and cool off in the summer.
Still get my milk delivered in glass bottles. from Munroe Dairy out of Rhode Island
When I was a kid living in North Fairhaven, we had milk delivered by Gulf Hill Dairy. He was almost part of the family. He’d leave glass bottles from his wire bottle rack in the box by the front door. I remember in colder winter days, the milk would freeze and would lift the cap off the bottle. We would get two different types of bottles depending on whether my mother ordered plain milk or milf with cream. The cream would rise to the top of this oddly shaped bottle and you would use this plunger devise to push into the bottle and seal the smaller opening under the main opening and pour off the cream.
We also had the old man we called “The Rag Man” who would push a cart up and down the streets calling out “rags!”. Never knew his name or anything else about him, except for his gravelly, hoarse voice.