The "Cream Always Rises To The Top" Story

My Cream Top Dairy bottle.

It was an ordinary day.  Putting the water pitcher away after our pork and sauerkraut dinner on New Year's Day.  We keep the bottles of wine and liquor on a shelf above the refrigerator and the water pitchers next to them above the microwave.  I tried to stretch high enough so I didn't have to get a chair, but it didn't work.  As I pushed it back from the front ledge of the shelf, I heard the sound of glass against glass.  "You'd didn't break that I hope!" I heard from the direction of my wife.  So I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and after climbing on top of it, found the reason for the noise.  The Cream Top Dairy glass quart bottle was at the rear of the shelf and was the item that created the response from my wife.  And, no, I didn't break anything.  But, after our guests left Carol and I talked about the good old times when our parents had ....... milkmen.  

An early dairy in Lancaster.

Carol lived in Martic Forge which is a small crossroads in southern Lancaster County.  She told me she remembered Turkey Hill Dairy making morning deliveries and putting the glass quart bottles in the metal milk box on the front porch.  She was in grade school at the time, shortly after Turkey Hill Dairy was founded.  The same Turkey Hill Dairy that is one of the largest manufacturers of milk and ice cream in south-eastern Pennsylvania and the same Turkey Hill that advertises on the panel which is behind home plate at the Phillies ballpark in Philadelphia.  I told her that my earliest memory of home delivered milk was when I was in grade school and living on North Queen Street in Lancaster City.  We had a metal milk box on the front porch and the Cream Top Dairy truck stopped a few times a week.  After we used the milk mom would wash the bottle and put it back in the milk box.  Stuff was really neat, at least to a young boy.  

Cream Top bottles that were delivered to
my home on North Queen St.  The milk would
be in the bottom and the cream on the top
curved part of the bottle.  Pretty neat.

The bottom of the bottle had regular whole milk in it and the top had heavy milk, as my mom called it.  Actually it was homogenized milk and the cream would rise to the top after bottling.  She could use it to make whipped cream when needed.  I'm not quite sure how long we continued to get milk delivered, but I do not remember the metal milk box interfering with my racing my toy cars on the rubber mat on the front porch when I was a pre-teen so I assume the milk box was gone by then.  There are now 31 dairies listed online that do business in Lancaster County.  Back when I was a child I doubt there were that many since the population was considerably less than what it is today. I can remember Queen Dairy located on South Queen Street as well as Pensupreme Dairy that was in both Lancaster and York.  Originally it was called Lancaster Sanitary Milk Company when it was founded in 1921, but changed in 1929 to Penn Dairy with a trade name of Pensupreme.  Pensupreme also had a corral of convenience stores that closed when the company went out of business.  One other dairy that I can recall was Moore Dairy, but I have no idea where it was located or how long it stayed in business.  Turkey Hill Dairy has withstood the test of time and is the largest dairy in Lancaster County.  Same dairy that delivered milk to Carol and her family back in the 1950s.  I have no idea where my Cream Top Dairy bottle came from, but I suspect my mom gave it to me at some point.  She probably had a few that she never returned to the milk box on the porch.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.