The Cows will no longer be coming home

On a recent outing my faithful minion and I explored the old Amboy milk plant. We had stopped to talk to Hank Gerdes about stories of old Amboy and he filled in some details about the plant which opened in the late 1920's. He had fond memories of seeing trucks lined up at the plant in the wee hours of the morning waiting to take on their daily load of fresh milk to deliver around the area.

One of their specialties was canned evaporated milk and cans of it appeared all over the world. Indeed, many a WW 2 service man mailed home labels from cans of Amboy milk as souvenirs to show the local town folks that their efforts on the home front were being felt and appreciated.

On the day we were there the trucks were gone, the doors boarded up, windows shuttered and broken. The huge ramps which once held the weight of dairy trucks now only hold silent memories.  It stands in mute testimony of a time that once was, when milk wasn't purchased at a convenience store or at the local super mart from a milk producing conglomerate  but rather was locally grown and locally supplied.