Saturday, June 13, 2009

history: Williams Dairy

Williams Dairy bottle

I was preparing for fire season by weed-whacking the yard today, and came across a buried bottle. It's from the Williams Dairy in Oakland, but I can't find much out about it. The format of the phone number, OL2-2816, suggests a date somewhere between the 40s and 60s. Googling suggests the exchange name was OLympic, and was probably north Oakland somewhere. Beyond that, I'm drawing a blank. Anyone know anything about it?
Posted by Gene at 6:34 PM
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3 comments:

highprairiedog said...

Hey Gene,
I'm old enough (57) to remember our milk being delivered by Williams Dairy when I lived in the Fruitvale District. (I'm also old enough to remember the alpha-numeric phone numbers!) think the dairy was in the vicinity of Aileen & Grove (now MLK). My father-in-law used to do a lot of their printing.
As an Oakland ex-pat. for the last 36 years, I enjoy your site, especially the sign series. It takes me back.

June 24, 2009 11:59 AM
Gene said...

At 43, I remember alpha-numeric phone numbers, too. At my grandparents' house in Michigan, their phone list was written that way, and I still remember the number to a family cabin starting with "JUneau 6". Thanks for the info on Williams Dairy. I got some more from the Oakland Library that I'll post about soon. What was your father-in-law's printing company? Is it still around?

June 24, 2009 12:33 PM
janet mack said...

My dad was a milkman for Williams from the early 1950s until they closed in 1974. The location was on Telegraph Avenue (I think 1600, but I'll have to check) on the east side of the street. A few blocks south is the freeway overpass and then the Nordic House on the west side. In the 1970s we also had milk delivered in the metal box with ice but my dad (who passed away a few years ago) said that earlier on the drivers had keys to everyone's houses. Imagine that today! The trucks had ice because they were not refrigerated, meaning that the guys who worked "inside" had to load all of that ice into the trucks in the morning.

October 6, 2009 6:17 PM

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