Milkman Quotes

“I remember the fact that milk was delivered every day by a milkman. In summer, my mother would make what now seem in my middle-aged imagination the most delicious iced milkshakes.”

“[There] was a time when a lot of people came to the door. The milkman. The iceman. The Fuller Brush man. Encyclopedia salesmen. There was a sense of interaction with the world that started right at your own front doorstep.”

“They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp.”

“Maybe real-life Mom didn't vacuum the house flawlessly arrayed in pearls and a pleated shirt like the mother on leave it to beaver. Maybe she flirted with the milkman or waited for the kids to go to bed so she could hammer back a couple of mugs of vodka pretending it was tea. But she was there to greet us when we came home from school in the afternoon. She made us dinner, kept watch on us through the kitchen window, put Band-Aids on our scrapes and bruises. She was Mom and that was no small thing.”

“Overnight, our neighbors began to look at us differently. Maybe it was the little girl down the road who no longer waved to us from her farmhouse window. Or the longtime customers who suddenly disappeared from our restaurants and stores. Or our mistress, Mrs. Trimble, who pulled us aside one morning as we were mopping her kitchen and whispered into our ear, "Did you know that the war was coming?" Club ladies began boycotting our fruit stands because they were afraid our produce might be tainted with arsenic. Insurance companies canceled our insurance. Banks froze our bank accounts. Milkmen stopped delivering milk to our doors. "Company orders," one tearful milkman explained. Children took one look at us and ran away like frightened deer. Little old ladies clutched their purses and froze up on the sidewalk at the sight of our husbands and shouted out, "They're here!" And even though our husbands had warned us--They're afraid--still, we were unprepared. Suddenly, to find ourselves the enemy.”

“When the shine is wearing off and the underlying cracks of a garlanded lifestyle become painfully apparent, reality may inexorably take its toll and gruelingly reveal the presence of a blatant and hideous gap of irrelevance and vanity. ("Could the milk man be the devil?" )”