The story of this hall
The milk bottle is the Owney tag of the American doorstep: a town's name pressed into glass, sent out on a route, and expected home. Every dairy embossed its own - CLOVERDALE, MEADOW GOLD, the family names of a thousand local herds - and every bottle made the round trip hundreds of times, stoop to truck to washer to stoop. The milkman knew the house by its empties. Then the paper carton and the supermarket cooler ended the route, and the bottles scattered into barn sales and creek beds. Gathered here, they read like a census of vanished dairies. The route ends at this wall. Carry your empties back.
1890–1965
