1956 Cape Girardeau Moo Juice

Cape Girardeans had quite a few choices of local milk products in 1956.

Here’s a full-page ad for Sunny Hill in the 1956 Sesquicentennial book. Do you remember the plastic “Twin Pak” handles? Were they green?

Schonhoff Dairy Farms

Schonhoff Dairy Farms wanted to know if you were concerned about getting the best milk possible for your family. They’d deliver it “fresh” to your door. I always wonder why people use quote marks for emphasis.

Keeping Pace with Cape Girardeau

The Midwest Dairy Products Division of City Products Corporation has been bringing you quality dairy products for more than 25 years, they bragged.

Pevely

I remember Pevely more for ice cream than milk.

Sugar Creek Creamery

I don’t remember them, but they must have the “Cape Girardeau Manufactured Best Cream Butter” because it’s in quotes. Suedekum Electronic Supply Company has a pretty fancy type font for their logo.

 

 

 

18 Replies to “1956 Cape Girardeau Moo Juice”

  1. Naturally I am biased toward Sunny Hill. I worked for the restaurant and the dairy (Prairie Farms) from 1976-82. I remember my dad taking me up to the coffee shop and getting treated to chocolate milk when I was little. I did not know back then that later 45 S. West End Blvd. would become a vital part of my life. The Blattners were good people. Still go by there when visiting Cape when I am up from Houston. Loved that place! Many life long friends.

  2. Ken, I could be wrong but I believe Suger Creek Creamery was on S Sprigg next to Haman’s Funeral Home, across the street from present day Ford & Sons Funeral Home.
    I have many good early memories of Sunny Hill restaurant and later in the 1970s of the Golden Coin Restaurant in the same building.

    1. I had a couple of email messages about Sugar Creek Creamery.

      Sharon Sanders has done a piece on it in her blog.

      Another reader speculated that the quotes around “Cape Girardeau Manufactured Best Cream Butter” meant that it was “a politically correct term for margarine.”

      Sharon’s column makes it look like they made real butter and the quotation marks were just a copywriter run amok.

      I remember my parents talking about how the butter industry required margarine to be sold uncolored (so it would be less attractive – think lard), with coloring that had to be mixed in after purchase.

  3. i remember going to sunny hill’s coffee shop and getting a ribeye steak and salad for 3.45?…at that time i thought it was a lot of money and a treat . back in the day when we slept with all the doors and windows open. the only security was a hook on a screen door..can you imagine? i woke up to a “stranger” on our front porch on south fredderick..scared the pee out of me..i think i was 4-5? my mom said it was the milk delivery guy. i still have milk delivered to my house in st.louis..oberweis,come in glass bottles..not cheap with delivery charge it is about 7 bucks a half gallon. now there is a 1.50 per bottle ..so as not hoard of give away those bottles..LOL

  4. I remember going to the Schonoff Dairy with Dad to
    treat the cows and deliver calves. It was very exciting when you are a young child.

  5. Yes, the twin pack handles were green, and if you collected 10 of them, you could go to the movie for free. I remember saving them in one special drawer and keeping tabs on the official count. Going to the movie on Saturday afternoon was a really big treat for me. I do not recall which theater had the offer, but I guess the dairy bought the handles from it and reused them.

  6. I believe Bill Stone is correct on the location of Sugar Creek Creamery. My uncle, Clarence Loos, worked there. It was there that his two younger brothers got their start in the dairy business. The two brothers graduated from college and went to work for Kraft foods. Both were able to earn Jade rings for their accomplishments. One was for regulating the size of the holes in Swiss cheese and the other for a spreadable cheese that was later called Cheez Whiz. The government wanted to provide cheese to the servicemen during WWII and my uncle came up with the idea of a spreadable cheese.

  7. Yes, they were GREEN and I collected then too! I stored mine in the kitchen at 1414 Mississippi Street. We also used them as digging tools too! Digging foxholes for little army guys…The perfect tool in soft ground!

  8. For larger users Sunny Hill delivered its homoginized product in 3 gallon metal cans. The milk machine was an icon of our kitchen.

    We also had pasturized milk delivered from Schonoffs. In the winter one could guage the temp by how far the cold separated cream had pushed the paper cap off of the bottle.

  9. Anyone remember McGregor dairy at the corner of North Sprigg and Bertling? We always bought our milk there, directly from his cooler. We had to provide our own containers and Mom would go home and skim the cream off the top so we could drink skim milk and of course have ice cream. Bertling was a gravel road in those days.

  10. We lived on merriwether down the street from Sugar Creek Creamery. We slept in the basement and had the windows open in the summer. The local farmers would drop off their milk cans early in the morning and would wake us up at 4:30/5:00 every morning. I can still remember the sounds of the milk cans clinking togeather.

  11. I think the Orpheum Theatre on Good Hope Street took the handles. I lived two blocks from the theatre on Frederick Street. Was thinking about those handles just a few weeks ago. Surprised I could still remember them 🙂

  12. Back in the mid 1970’s Sunny Hill Restaurant had all you could eat fish, I remember it was on Tuesdays, for $1.60. That restaurant was kind of a sleeper place to eat. The prices were low and the food was always good. (I don’t want to fail to mention the 15 cents Biscuits and Gravy at the Southern Restaurant, down by the river bridge, in that same time period).

  13. My grandfather was a milk delivery man for Sunny Hill Dairy and a great aunt was married to Louis Blattner. We would play in our grandfather’s DIVCO delivery truck which he parked in the street outside the house. Occasionally we would get to go to the Sunny Hill restaurant for a treat, though I cannot remember what we ate. Had to have included ice cream!

  14. This morning a local radio station in Tucson played Tennessee Waltz by Patti Page. I immediately think of Sunny Hill Dairy whenever I hear that song (which is rarely). I began explaining to my husband how my mother, who didn’t drive, and I would walk to the Sunny Hill restaurant, have some burgers and shakes and insert a coin in a table side jukebox. We always selected Tennessee Waltz. I described what I remember of the layout with booths on the sides and a large u-shaped counter. This recollection is from the 50’s, so I wasn’t sure if it were accurate. I immediately thought of Ken’s blog as a source to verify. I wasn’t disappointed! Not only was there a feature story, but someone kindly posted a link which shows a picture of the interior. I’ve saved that photo and can’t wait to share it with my granddaughters who always love to hear stories of my childhood in Cape Girardeau.

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