The Milkman Cometh

When I was in elementary school, our milk was delivered directly to our back porch. Every other day, the open sided dairy truck pulled into our driveway, picked up the empty bottles and left full ones. The driver's name was Jimmy and he was a high school student who rose every morning at 4 to make his dairy run. No matter the weather, Jimmy made his deliveries one way or the other. He was proud of having a job, of being recognized on his milk route, of knowing his customer's names. During the spring, we would sometimes see him on our way to school and he would wave and yell to us, The Milkman Cometh! and then laugh.

In those days, the city was loosely divided into three sections. Arlington Heights was where all the money was. Homes were built on oversized lots and had swimming pools, tennis courts, trees, and people to tend them. There were expensive cars in the driveways and expensive clothes on the kids. The other end of the city was at the Cambridge line where the homes were built in three stories with different families to each floor. It was an area of
liquore stores, a chemical factory, gas stations. Kids that lived there knew the bus routes. In the middle, where we lived, was East Arlington. Far less rich than The Heights, far less poor then the Cambridge end, we were in the middle of the middle class. Jimmy's route was our section of the city but he lived along the Cambridge line. What few gangs existed then mostly came out of the poorer section of town. They wore black leather jackets, black motorcycle boots and were said to carry knives although no one had ever actually seen one. They traveled in packs,
kept to themselves and were satisfied to prey on the old and the weak. They survived on their reputations and their looks and were usually written off as bad seeds but not dangerous. A few days after Jimmy refused to let them ride in the milk truck, they ambushed and stabbed him, smashed all the milk bottles, scattered the glass over the street and overturned the truck before running away. Jimmy died in surgery.

It was a level of violence that no one was prepared for and no one understood. The five gang kids responsible were all caught in a matter of days and all five were convicted and sent to prison but it comforted no one. A new milkman took Jimmy's route but we never asked his name.