Lawson's seems to be one topic that I have endless milked during the past year.
Why? For one thing, the convenient chain sponsored the ill-fated Issue 1 in the fall of 1962, attempting to do away with the Blue Law so the firm could be open on Monday. And Lawson's was a company that believed in the power of advertising, with huge ads pushing one main sales item, such as the ever-popular Dutch Loaf.
The full-page ad below is a little different in that it's not selling milk, orange juice or lunch meat; it's selling an idea – specifically that everyone was enjoying lower milk prices because of Lawson's. It appeared in the Lorain Journal on March 3, 1963.
It's an interesting feel-good ad, but I'm not sure if it won any new converts. I think they'd have been better off pushing hard salami on sale.
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It's funny how I feel nostalgic about Lawson's, despite the fact it probably helped put the local dairies out of business.
We drank a lot of milk in the Brady House when my siblings and I were kids. We had a glass of it with breakfast and lunch, and of course we put it on cereal, which we we had not only at breakfast, but also as a snack.
We were still having Home Dairy deliver milk in the late 1960s/early 70s. I can still see the wire milk holder in our garage next to the steps. But at some point, our milk man had come into the house (without knocking) and startled Mom. I think the story was that it was hot out and he wanted to put the milk in the fridge.
At that point, the time was ripe to drop home delivery and just buy it ourselves – probably at Lawson's, which was only a few minutes away.
