By the turn of the last century the availability of personal cameras meant that photography was often used for entertainment. Here the scenario is simple: three little girls and a male relation are having some fun with the milk delivery wagon – and the driver is a willing participant. Every era has its own brand of humor, and though this may predate Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Cops, the heads poking out of both ends of the wagon indicate why the early film versions of comedy, growing out of Vaudeville, found wide audience appeal.
The milk business belonged to Vanderslice & Son of Williams Corner, PA. Over a century ago it was already necessary to assure customers that the food product was pure.
This very small unmounted print proves that the amateur photographer was having as much fun as the group in the picture and forgot to keep the camera level – the scene was uphill about 25 degrees right to left; restoring some equilibrium meant rotating the image, re-cropping to a rectangular format as well as supplying the resultant missing parts of the right lower corner including parts of the wheel, all of it before retouching the usual ravages of time – all in a days work for photo restoration.
