Top: a Fleischmann's Wagon, location unknown. Bottom: Metropolitan Avenue at the intersection of Kew Gardens Road circa 1936. Click on image to enlarge.

Ye Olde Route Delivery

by ALAN LINSKY

During the 1940's in Kew Gardens, and before the word "super" was added to the word "market", much of what reached our dinner tables was delivered by door to door route salesmen. Of course, the most basic staples were milk and milk products (cream, butter, eggs, cheese etc.) and they were vended fresh daily by both The Borden Company and Sheffield Farms. Sheffield, on the one hand, plied the route with horse and wagon while Borden's had motorized their fleet early on. The horses eventually did Sheffield in because tending them and handling food products (which the driver was required to do) didn't sit too well with the health department! Nevertheless, their products were richer and far more wholesome then what we get today!

Baked goods came to our door by either the familiar brown Dugan's trucks or the green ones of its chief competitor Krugg. The variety of cookies, cakes, pies and breads was impressive and tasty although not of Park Avenue quality. And who could forget the early summer evening ding-a-lings of the Good Humor ice cream truck slowly inching its way through every single street in the village? The pops were great but my favorites were the chocolate and butterscotch sundaes with their collectible pictures of movie stars under the covers (now that I think of it, that's where I must have gained all that weight when I was a kid!).

Foodstuffs were not the only products delivered door to door back then. For those who had yet to acquire genuine refrigeration or for those early refrigerators that often broke down, there was always the iceman. In this case, an elderly Italian gentleman with horse and wagon from a small plant near Hillside and Myrtle Avenues (I remember the huge iron "caliper" that he used to haul the chunks of ice into our kitchen).

Knife and scissors sharpening came to us on a once a week basis. I think I remember that it was Thursdays that we would hear the slow clanging of a gong coming from an open sided antique truck.

Before UPS became the only game in town, most of the upscale department stores in New York made shipments in their own vans. In fact, I don't think a day went by that a big red R.H. Macy truck didn't rumble through our streets delivering everything from bedding to bathroom tissue (we got most of the bathroom tissue!).

The Fuller Brush man was also a regular visitor to Kew Gardens bringing us the best brooms, mops and other floor cleaning products as did the Hoover Vacuum Company with their superb machines.

Everyone talks today about the conveniences of modern technology, but nothing was more convenient than having everything hand delivered to your door back when!

Al Linsky lived in Kew Gardens from 1938 to 1963 and attended P.S. 99 from 1944 to 1953. He is now retired, splitting his time between Brentwood, CA and Woodmere, NY. His avocation is as a broker of antique vehicles to the motion picture and television industry.

Back | Next