If You Don't Own A Cow.....

"Cloverland Milk Truck" oil on board (16 x 20) 2004

Most Baltimoreans of a certain age can sing the Cloverland jingle including the phone number NOrth 9- 2222. This truck is from an earlier era when the bottling plant was on North Monroe street and the phone number was the Lafayette exchange. The building that housed that plant is still standing on that spot in NW Baltimore. You cannot miss it because it has a big milk bottle built right into the side of it.There are other relics of that era in plain sight if you just hunt around a bit for them.

The original Cloverland Dairy bottling plant on N. Monroe Street.

Divco truck painted in the authentic colors of the Cloverland dairy waiting to  be used as a movie prop.

 In polling Baltimoreans I question very few who cannot remember the name of the dairy that delivered milk to their homes. We had Royal Dunloggin Dairy and adored our milkman Mr. Ross. He was the only man besides my father to who my mother wrote notes. Sometimes after supper she would scribble a line or two on stationery and insert it into an empty, rinsed milk-bottle which would then be placed on the side porch. In the wee hours of the morning Mr. Ross would pull up in his Divco truck and hurry toward our house with his metal basket of half-gallon milk bottles. Then he would read the note which instructed him whether to leave us an unscheduled delivery of chocolate milk, orange juice or heavy whipping cream...or as the song says..."no milk today."

"Cloverland Crossing" oil on canvas (20" x 20") 2004

Royal Dunloggin Farms at Bel-Loc Diner

Some days I am in awe of my good fortune. Last week I met my friend Nancy for breakfast at the Bel-Loc Diner in Parkville, MD. Since I love all things dairy in Maryland - imagine how elated I was to find this vintage milk machine sitting there behind their counter AND still in use! Talk about time travel. The diner opened in 1964 in an era when Royal Dunloggin was still in business and before it became part of the Royal Farm Store family. Well the experience sat so well with me that I had to share it here with some of my Royal Dunloggin paintings and stories, too.
The cows for the Royal Dunloggin Dairy used to graze in Howard County, MD. Sometime in the early 1960s a housing development sprung up on the land. It is not hard to find because it is still called Dunloggin today. However before the moo cows roamed the farm it was a forest that was cleared for lumber and when the owner was finished with that business he said he was “dunloggin’” and the land became a farm. Some of the early Royal Dunloggin Farms pint-size milk bottles are embossed with images of tree logs. This logo gives credibility to the story as it was told to me. The particular herd of dairy cows that gave their milk everyday for Royal Dunloggin was a very unusual, well-bred group. Our family had Royal Dunloggin delivered several days a week. And our milkman Mr. Ross was kind enough to get my cat out of the tree once, too.
The painting of the truck is really a tribute to Mr. Ross who so patiently tried to please my mother’s particular rules about how milk was to be handled. Another part of his route was to deliver milk to St. Mark’s parochial school in Catonsville. Everyone loved to see and hear him pull up in his Divco truck and bring in the white and chocolate milk for the students.
I collect Maryland dairy milk bottles and use them for inspiration while painting my milk trucks. This painting of the bottle here is from my collection. Instead of putting milk inside I mostly use the tiny Styrofoam pellets to simulate the white milk that I still drink every day from the current wax-paperboard containers. The clear plastic bottles are just not the same and honestly it affects the flavor of the milk.