Milking Tradition

Every morning without fail, Gerald Frye delivers something that’s rare nowadays: the personal touch.

For the past 15 years, he has delivered milk to the doorsteps of Ventura County residents--quietly and with comforting consistency.

“People tell me, I am their alarm clock,” said the 42-year-old former Marine.

“I’m a freak about time,” he says, stacking milk crates with quick precision.

He likes the fact that people rely on him and that he leaves something for his customers to look forward to each morning.

“It’s a luxury,” said Miriam McGrath, a customer for seven years. “This way I don’t have to run to the market. Plus, we like the milk.”

In the many years that Frye’s been delivering milk, he has missed only one day due to driving rains that caused a hillside to collapse onto the path he travels every morning.

That’s when he found out about an 88-year-old blind woman on his route through Ojai who called disconcerted because her delivery wasn’t made. She told him that without her weekly delivery, she wouldn’t have enough to last.

He made the delivery later that day in his car, which was able to handle the rough road better than the lumbering truck.

“I couldn’t do without him,” said the woman, who declined to give her name but is an Ojai resident who’s been getting milk delivered since the 1950s. “I always think when he comes, ‘Thank God he came, because if he didn’t I’d do without or make due with what little I had left.’ ”

Frye’s company, G.S. Frye Distributing, is one of only six milk services that supply dairy products to homes throughout the county.

The old-fashioned service he provides is a vestige of a bygone era when doctors made house calls, gas attendants pumped gas for no extra charge and service was key. The milkman was second only to the Helms Bakery man who inhabited suburban neighborhoods leaving the tantalizing smell of fresh baked pastries and bread behind.

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But many of those amenities fell out of favor, only to be replaced by cost-effective, sterile supermarkets.

Frye has kept alive the urban ritual that began in Ventura County in 1916 when milk was delivered by Model-T in glass bottles by Clifford Hardison, owner of Sanitary Dairy.

Frye delivers for Chase Brothers Dairy in Oxnard, which ships its milk in from dairy farms elsewhere in California.

Even though Frye boasts that his service offers milk that will keep four to five days longer than store-bought milk, and the dairy has expanded its list to nearly 80 items--including such essentials as fruit, cereal and laundry detergent--many people are not aware that a milkman still delivers.

“At least once a month I have people come up and tell me they didn’t know that we were still around,” he said. “A lot of people think it’s like the dinosaurs--we’re dead and buried.”

Although the milk is more expensive and the delivery fee is $5 a month, Frye says the savings is in the convenience of not having to go to the store and not buy $50 more worth of merchandise that you didn’t intend on buying.

To most of his customers, Frye’s service goes mostly unseen but not unnoticed.

His day begins at 2 a.m., when most are deep in sleep. It’s a hard schedule that he’s forced himself to get used to. He works for himself, and generally sets his own timetable.

“I’m probably the hardest boss I’ve ever had, but I’m the best boss I’ve ever had.”

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He rattles through the streets of Ventura in his 1975 Chase Dairy truck that he bought from another milkman who went bankrupt. Pictures of his 9-year-old son, Brandon, are displayed on the cab wall behind him.

His 12-hour daily route spans from Camarillo to Ojai, with about 130 stops in between.

Frye enjoys the solitude of the early morning hours.

There are a few people just leaving bars or otherwise meandering about. Doughnut shops are preparing the coffee and pastries, and newspapers are making their morning deliveries, but altogether there is a peaceful quiet.

As Frye’s refrigerated truck bumps and lurches along the rivets in the street, he reflects on the changes he’s seen in the years he’s been driving that route. He points to a valley cluttered with houses and airs his concern about the growing suburban sprawl.

“It’s a shame, I remember when all this used to be farmland,” he said. “This is some of the richest soil in the country, if not the world, but some people are intent on covering that up with concrete.”

When he began his job in 1983, the dairy still had milking cows on site, there were more farms, and things seemed simpler.

It was all a refreshing change to Frye, who grew up in New York City and Boston and moved to Ventura 24 years ago.

“I don’t think a milkman would dare come in where I was brought up,” he said.

He wants much more for his son. “I’m just praying that he can make a living that he can afford to live out here when he grows up,” Frye said.

Most days Frye works his route in solitude. His path rarely intersects with the lives of the people he’s delivering milk to. He knows each of them by name, by address.

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This one takes cream for their coffee. That one only likes old-fashioned whole milk. That woman’s son is away at college, so she won’t be needing as much this month.

There are only small clues left about their lives. One family he delivers to every morning around 4 proudly displays a bumper sticker that reads, “My child is an honor student at Matilija Junior High.”

Another customer, a shut-in, allows spider webs to collect until the milkman breaks them on his way to her door. She relies on him as her lifeline to the outside world.

He brings dog biscuits for the pets at one farm and ice cream for children at others.

Then there’s Christmas, a time when he learns how much he is appreciated. For several years, his regular customers have been leaving gifts out for him.

“At first, I think they thought I was a diabetic alcoholic. All I ever got was See’s candy and alcohol,” he said with a laugh.

Now he receives more fitting gifts--a cow tie to match his cow-covered seat inside his truck.

As a gift to himself, he buys himself one lottery ticket each week. On this particular day, before going back to Ventura, he stops at the Java & Joe coffee shop in Ojai.

His routine is to stock the refrigerator before pulling out a crumpled lottery ticket, which he checks against the winning numbers listed in the newspaper.

“I check it in the morning, that way I know whether I have to finish my route or not,” he said.