It is this enthusiastic entrepreneur who first set in motion the delivery business that would roll for well over a century.Īn Englishman born in 1821, John joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Liverpool. As his biographer, I feel I know my great-great-great grandfather better than any man I never met. Indeed, in the nearly 140-year run, the Winder milkman was a fixture on porches from Logan to Las Vegas-and even Orange County, California.Īt the head of a hallway in my home is a portrait of John Rex Winder, family patriarch, watching me through his spectacles, with a hint of a warm smile beneath his milk-white beard. “The milkman no longer cometh,” cried the headline in The Salt Lake Tribune. On Friday, July 5, 2019, the last Winder Farms home deliveries were made. (When we die, we just move west, across the lane and ditch, to be buried in Valley View Memorial Park-a cemetery the family started back in the 1950s.) Yet, a dairy no longer presides at the top of the Lane as it has for decades.

In fact, cousins and relatives still occupy all six of the family homes that line the east side of the old lane leading up to the former dairy site. Some say there is milk in our veins! My 90-year-old Grandma Winder is still next door, and 92-year-old Grand Aunt Marion is next door to her. My kids are the sixth-generation Winders to call Winder Lane home. Those dependable knights of the night, heading out to neighborhoods near and far, no longer ride. They no longer pass the white ranch-style wooden fences and the deep, front lawns of the family homes. The milk trucks no longer rumble at odd hours over the lane’s half dozen speedbumps, under the full canopy of honey locust trees. There is a melancholy silence on Winder Lane, as the tree-lined stub of 4400 West, south of 4100 South in West Valley City is known.

The Milkman Cometh by Kate Richards