Newspaper Article 1983 – Tweedie Brothers

Country People  – AUGUST, 1983           Page 17

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front gates, so soon I had to go down the main street.  You know the pub there, where the Heretaunga Street Woolworth’s is now, the Hastings Hotel, well a train came across and the horse just swung around like that, put his feet on the footpath and the wheels in the gutter, heading for the public bar.  They nearly had milk in their whisky that day.”

Jim goes on: “I pacified him a bit, but oh my gosh, he wouldn’t stand at all after that, you’d pull up at the door, and he’d be playing up all the time. If he heard a motor lorry a mile away, he’d jump. I had to tie the wheel.”  So Jim told Ted English he’d better take him back, for though a lovely pony, he wouldn’t stand anywhere, and was too big a risk.

“Oh,” said Ted.  “I was just wondering – I only want ten quid if he’s any use to you.”

Delivering milk was hard work.  You filled the billy up to the mark, one or two pints, went right to the back door and then Mum would want an extra pint and you’d trail all the way back again. You were on your feet the whole time.

But the hardest work was getting the money in, says Jim.  “Some paid weekly, some monthly and some not at all.”  Like the lady who protested when her Sunday cream was cut off; the doctor said she had to have it.

Jim was more sorry for another lady who had “a fair lump of a family.”  “Look, I can’t pay you,” she said, “but I’ve got a gramophone there and a dozen records …”  Discovering that these belonged to the children, Jim “let her get away with it.”

The best part of Jim Tweedie’s milk selling-career, which ended when brother Bob moved into town round 1929 and took over the run, was the day he picked up the new motor-driven delivery van, first in the district.

“We bought a Ford chassis from old Jackie Peach,” says Jim, and Ross Dysart’s put a body on it.  When I went to get the van, it looked really posh, but I said: “Before you go any further, what way do you drive this thing?”  ‘That’s nothing to do with us’, they said, ‘it’s yours now, we sold it to you.’

“They didn’t believe I’d never driven a motor car in my life and eventually took me down Maraekakaho Road, showed me what to do.  If there’d been anyone coming, I’d have gone clean through them.”

The Borough Engineer issued the licences, he couldn’t give you a test as he didn’t drive himself; if you were big enough to drive you were old enough.

What a difference the Model T van made. Loading it on cold dark mornings there was no fiddling about with torch or kerosene lamp, you just put the light on. It took half the time to hit town and you could make the vehicle stand merely by putting the brake on.

You walked straight back through the van from the driver’s seat, filled up orders from the taps on the cans and away went the delivery boys on their bikes, billies swinging from the handlebars.

Mechanical problems and punctures were few, except when the Tweedie brothers put a bridge over the drain and topped it off with rubble from a burnt-out building.  “I had a puncture every time I went over it,” says Jim, “till I had a look and picked up hundred of nails.”

There’s no doubt about the greater efficiency of the motor-powered milk cart, but I bet the Model T still knew, should you be in a bad mood early in the morning.  When you swung the crank handle, it would give you a kick.

Photo captions –

The first motor-driven milk delivery van in the district.

Woman with dogs.  Van with puncture. Jim Tweedie with a problem.