The ice, rag, milk and coal men are all a distant memory when I think back to my Manchester-Pittsburgh neighborhood, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t miss these hucksters from around the block who were fading out as I was coming up.

The timeframe was the late 1940s and early 1950s, when these men all played a mobile part in providing communities with essential supplies and perishables. They represented convenience and our older neighbors regularly rubbed elbows with these bygone businessmen.