Greenville had several parades every year downtown on Main Street’s bricks. Sometimes the Blanding Milk Co. would be in the parade for advertising purposes. Once Judy and I got to sit in the back of a milk truck and throw out Blanding Milk Co. pencils and other little goodies. I recently saw an old home movie of the Blanding Milk Co. family members getting their horse-drawn milk wagon ready for a parade. But by the time I was born, the horse-drawn wagon was long gone.
Once a year, in the fall, one or all of us sisters had to have our photo taken to be on the Blanding Milk Co. calendar, which was given to all our customers. It was always some kind of “cute” photo of Judy and me drinking milk, or little Susie feeding a Dachshund puppy some milk in a bowl.
My five aunts were a big part of my life when I was in Greenville. All but the youngest had gotten married and started having kids, but Janie (the youngest) was only about five years older than Judy, my older sister. She was much younger than Dorothy, the sister before her. So she was a teenager when we were kids.
My dad’s family business was always interesting to me because my grandparents’ house was attached to the milk plant, so when I visited them I could walk through a long hallway and go into the plant. It smelled like cottage cheese to me, and on Sunday evenings a worker would be making cottage cheese in a huge vat just inside the plant’s door. I liked to go in and watch him stirring the milk with a giant wooden paddle until it turned into cottage cheese. I loved getting a sample fresh out of the vat; it was in big chunks until it was chopped up for packaging.
When I lived there in the 1950s, Greenville appeared to be prosperous and hopping. When I went downtown, either walking with Cindy or driving with my mom, there were always lots of people walking around and shopping, and all the storefronts were occupied. There was the Greenville Furniture Co., which had interesting things in the basement like doll beds. Cindy and I each got a doll bed there. They were about ten inches long and had plastic gingham covers, one red and white and the other blue and white. These beds had the infamous and frightening tag on the end that said: DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. Of course we didn’t want to get arrested, but on the other hand the tags were ugly and in the way. We discussed this at length, but we didn’t know what to do. So we compromised by cutting off the tags at the point where the scary message started.