From Neon Tommy – Article by Benjamin Gottlieb
Ask the average American to visualize a quintessential 1950s panorama, a Back to the Future-like glimpse of the nation’s self-proclaimed “Golden Age,” and odds are they’ll paint a similar setting.
Scenes from Gary Ross’s Pleasantville instantly come to mind. Corner diners, packed to the brim with sociable, young teens, gorging themselves with cherry-topped chocolate malts, sporting pink poodle skirts and t-bird leather jackets. Automobiles of a feel-good era – the embodiment of the American Dream. The Chevy Corvettes and Starliner Coupes of a bygone era. The drive-through movies and drive-through diners. Suburbia in its infancy.
And of course, the neighborhood milkman, hand delivering quarts of cream-topped milk to the eagerly awaiting, and overtly oppressed, American housewives.
Growing up in the Los Angeles suburbs, the 21st century milkman that came to our carried something a bit less nostalgic and arguably, somewhat absurd: gallons of bottled water.
As a young boy, I would watch intently from my parent’s living room couch for the arrival of the Sparkletts man, hauling blue-capped water jugs into my quaint two-bedroom home in Sherman Oaks. His big, green truck, laden with shinny blue reflector panels and construction vehicle tires, would pull up like clockwork, dropping off a few five gallon containers and then putter away begrudgingly to the next neighborhood subscriber.
