Remember the milk man?

Remember the milk man?

See those milk bottles behind me?

This picture was taken at Grandma and Grandpa Thomas' house in Bangor, Michigan. It was March, but there was still snow on the ground. This was 1959, I was 4 years old. Grandma and Grandpa had a milk man who delivered milk in glass bottles with paper lids and left them in the entryway (sometimes called a "mud room") to the house. Just behind the milk bottles was the front door which led into the living room. 

Grandpa built that house from the ground up, not too many years before I was born. It was about 3 miles south of Bangor on County Road 681, on 16 acres of land. 

This picture was taken quite a few years later, after Grandma and Grandpa died and the farm had been sold to someone else. It still has the original garage and barn. And the huge old weeping willow tree behind the house. The road frontage was 2 acres, and the property stretched back 8 acres from the road. 

Grandpa raised pigs -- the pigsty was to the left of the barn and there was a corn crib next to that. At the back of the property was the corn field where he raised feed corn for the pigs. Every year they had a pig slaughtered and sold it to get money to pay for a trip to Ohio to visit Grandma's relatives.

We lived in Bangor until I was in 2nd grade, then moved to Hartford for the rest of my school years. (Well, we moved back to Bangor for the first half of 4th grade so that my Dad could repair all the damage that renters had done to our house there. It took several years to sell that house in Bangor, but we didn't try renting it out again.)