Everyday things that no longer exist. Have one?

I ran across this old neg while scanning and archiving. It was taken in

London some years ago, and reminded me of when the Milk Man

delivered right to the "milk chute". We use to steal dry ice from his truck

and do all sorts of dangerous things with it. It would probably be a

Federal offence to do that now.

 

Do you have an image of some common thing that no longer exists?

 

Hey Allen, do they still deliver milk to the door in England?

 

M6. (can't remember the lens, 50mm?) Tri-X @ ASA 320<div></div>

Marc,

 

You'll have to change your subject heading. Every morning the milkman comes down our street with his milk cart whining.

 

Very occasionally, we still get a rag and bone man come down with his horse and cart. Next time I hear him coming I'll have to run out and take some pics.

Childhood is what does not exist anymore on that picture, as far as I understand.

Many thousands of 'milkmen' still deliver milk in returnable glass bottles everyday to people everywhere in towns and cities here in the UK. Unigate , Co-op and Express dairies to name but few companies. And most of them still use the 3 wheeler rechargeable electric milk 'floats' you would have seen. (They go on forever because they are heavily engineered and have few moving parts to wear out.)

Oh yes, and here in Portsmouth at least, the old boy comes round door to door at least a couple of times a year with his handcart to sharpen knives.

I have yet to see anyone coming around with a horse drawn Fuji Frontier 1 hour lab though :-)

Ambition: to go out and get "everyday things" done.

When I was a student in England in 1975 I paid 4p for a pint of milk. Those were the days. In 1978 it cost 16p. I wonder how much it costs today.

 

While this photograph provides a warm and comfy view of nostalgia, there is a grim reality behind it. The dairy industry is needlessly propped up with price supports, and the consumer ends up paying a high price for the product. The EU is buried under a mountain of butter and cheese that they keep buying from dairy farmers in order to keep prices up. Market forces are not allowed to play out. They keep cheaper US products out.

 

Photography is a wonderful and powerful medium. People interpret different things from a plain and simple image, often in ways the photographer never imagined.

 

Thanks for the snap.

The Pittsford Dairy in Pittsford, New York still sells milk in bottles as an option. The dairy buys old bottles from dairys that have gone out of business. Sort of when you used to look on the bottom of a C--e bottle to see where they were made.

So Vikram you would like the UK to be one large US owned Corporate farm? The many thousands of family owned farms clinging on for survival to be finally pushed over the edge by losing all subsidies in favour of "Cheaper US products" just for the sake of your 'market' forces?

 

Well, I will pay more if it means my local butcher doesnt have to close to make room for another bloody McDonalds and pay more to stop USA inc. bulldozing the contours off our beautiful landscape to install a few more corporate chicken concentration camps for KFC (I prefer to pay more for organic free range chickens and eggs) and I will happily pay more for vegetables to keep the Jolly Green Giant and his mates from killing English produce completely.

 

We have had enough homogenisation imposed upon us from both Europe and the USA in our food, our laws, our culture, our music, politics etc etc.

 

Long live subsidies if they help to forstall the awful day when England and the rest of the UK are finally forced to become USA's 'Airstrip One' as George Orwell called it!

 

Tony Blair has already bent over so far for George W Bush that it's become obscene and I dont think poor Tony can get any more in.

 

Anyhow the USA has extremely robust protectionism of its own 'markets' from imports so dont lecture until the USA has dropped them.

While I think the Common Agricultural Policy is "bad thing", the idea that the US does not do exactly the same thing (but usually with different products) in order to aid its farmers is absurd. The US are at least equal in this regard with the EU. A classic recent event is the attempt by southern catfish farmers to keep out Vietnamese catfish by a) pretending they are not really catfish and b) they are raised in unsanitory conditions. Naturally the Vietnamese catfish are much cheaper and people like them.

Wow, if 3 little bottels of milk can trigger a heated political debate...AND

NO PHOTOS...what's next?

 

Do you guys have any pictures? I'd love to see the "Rag and Bone" man

and his cart. When I was a kid the knife sharpening guy came by twice a

month. Loved to watch the sparks fly. And there was the vegetable

farmer and his open truck (which, as a kid, I hated). All that has

disappeared in most areas of the US. We don't even have an Ice Cream

truck cruising our neighborhood in the summer. As someone pointed out,

everything is becoming all the same...run by faceless corporations.

Are you kidding me?!?!? Here in the U.S. we actually pay OUR farmers NOT to grow crops. I sent a list of things to the US Dep of Agriculture trying to convince them that I don't grow a LOT of things, and that they should foward my stipend to my home address. I guess one has to actually own a farm in order to be paid not to grow crops, though, since the checks never came..... <<<sigh>>>

Bob

 

Right this is the current iteration of the CAP - pay you NOT to grow something. Of course this is after years of buying everything at a set price and then dumping the produce somewhere else like the Third World as "aid". Of course the US, I don't think, has quite advanced to this stage yet they are still on the dumping elsewhere track.

Don't know if this counts, but one rarely sees a slide rule any more.

 

Leica M6T, 35mm 1.4 ASPH, Kodak E100S.<div></div>

The Bush administration is trying its best to get rid of farm subsidies, but it is difficult to fight the status quo. At least somebody is finally attempting to do the right thing.

 

Trevor, there will always be an England. Except over here we only see it on Masterpiece Theater and think everybody there has an Oxbridge accent, went to Eton, rows at Henley, and is related to the Queen.

 

Most family farms are just not financially viable and have to change with the times. The same could be said of Leica. It has nothing to do with the US, but with market forces as outlined a few centiuries ago by Adam Smith, from your side of the ocean.

 

McDonalds and KFC are not universally liked over here, in fact most people with good taste eat organic free range meat, if they eat red meat at all. The question is how does one feed the masses, and the masses want junk food. Just as they want Canon Rebels instead of Leicas.

 

You forget that "demand pull" is a greater force when it comes to cultural homogenization. The MTV US culture is around the globe, whether the French like it or not. It is imported, rather than exported.

 

There is a lot of good in the US, and it is sad that the rest of the world chooses not to see it, and blame their problems as stemming from some US based demon seed. By the way, Leicas are cheaper here than in Europe. You fellows are taxed to the hilt.

Vikram. You're dreaming if you think Bush is cutting farm subsidies. Have you been reading the paper lately? Check out this link from CNN on May 13, 2002 entitled "Bush Signs $190 Billion Farm Bill". Yes that's BILLION.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/13/farm.bill/index.html

 

By the way. The knife sharpener announces his passage through my neighbourhood here in downtown Toronto with a bell. He has a big whetstone on a little handpulled wooden cart.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

Bishop, the legislative branch (Senate) is controlled by the Democrats, and they're gearing up for the 2004 elections (Daschle, Gephardt, etc.), so they pushed through a lot of pork barrel farm projects. Unfortunately, the $190 Billion was a compromise that came through the Washington sausage machine. No fault of Bush. The king of pork is Robert Byrd, a Dem.

 

To put it into perspective, the US spends $220 Billion on prescription drugs, and $340 Billion on the auto industry. The healthcare tab is over $1 Trillion (a lot of waste), yet China has the same life expectancy. However, most people are only concerned about Britney and J. Lo.

I haven't seen this style tin sign in a while.<div></div>