1952 – Milk and Summer Camp

What’s the next topic for our celebration of summer? Summer camp. If you were born in the mid-century, chances are likely that you experienced some type of summer camp in your youth. I certainly did, and it brings back memories of sunburns, camp fires, and gossip. The yearly ritual was a chance to leave home for a week to swim, do crafts, and attempt to learn nature survival skills. I never did learn to conquer the task of starting a fire by rubbing 2 sticks together, but I sure did try. On another topic, I never did get the suntan I desired, but I sure did try. One year I rubbed my bare skin with a stick of butter in hopes that my freckles would join together to make me brown. All I got was red skin, painful blisters and more freckles. Ah, the stupidly of youth.

The ad you see is from the August 1952 edition of Good Housekeeping for Canco Disposable Milk containers. It seems strange to our 2022 minds that disposable milk containers would need to be advertised. But recall that in the 1950’s the milk delivery man was in high-demand for mid-century households. The milkman would deliver dairy goods to customers on his route a few times a week, much the same as the Amazon drivers who deliver our latest online purchase to our door step. Milk was always delivered in glass containers and when he delivered, he would also pick up the customer’s empty glass bottles to be washed, sanitized, and reused to hold more milk. In 1952, the concept of selling milk in disposable containers was new.

I understand the convenience of disposable containers to a camp or school, but based on what we know today about our overflowing landfills, it is too bad that convenience won.