This week our series on well-known Clear Lake dairies concludes. As we wrap up this topic there are a complete of interesting facts. In the early 20th century edition of The History of Cerro Gordo County, it was recorded that by 1905, there were 13,846 dairy cows producing milk for sale within local communities. The price of a quart of milk at the time was 8 cents per quart. With the abundance of dairy herds in and around Clear Lake, some local Clear Lake farmers branched out to produce cheese. In 1875, Marcus Tuttle and his brother Elon Augustus as well as Theron Palmeter, whose dairy farm was in Section 10 of Lake Township, branched out to produce cheese from their surplus milk supply.
Perkins Dairy was owned and operated by John and Marlus Perkins in Clear Lake from 1938 until it was sold in 1947. HIs father George E. Perkins had started his dairy operations in 1921. The diary farm was in the area where Veterans’ Memorial Golf Course is now located. During the early years of Perkin’s Dairy, George made use of a horse that was made available when rural mail carrier Ted Winnie decided to change from a horse to make deliveries, to a motor car. Mr. Perkin’s son John remembered that his father turned “Ted” the horse into a milk wagon horse. Below is John’s personal description of what happened next with his father’s new milk wagon horse one summer day.
“Dad was making a delivery on North Fifth Street near Jefferson (near today’s N. Lakeview Dr) when a truck, with a canvas flapping, out the rear, came past. Old “Ted” used that for an excuse to run away. At a gallop, he headed down Fifth Street leaving in his wake a ghastly path of devastation. At each chuckhole in the road a crate of bottles would take wing, then crash to earth, scattering broken glass and a white river of milk…When Dad caught up to the wreck, there stood “Ted”….the harness was mangled; the wagon was in disrepair and one of the thills (two long wooden or metal poles that extended from the body of the wagon and would be attached to a horse to allow better steering) had rammed up under “Ted’s” right leg leaving an ugly gash.” (From “Of Frogs and Friends”, pgs. 122-122, John H. Perkins, copyright, 1997).
John closed this story by stating that his father would then buy a Model T pickup for use on the milk routes. Since his father never learned to drive, John was allowed to drive the pickup and carry out the milk deliveries. John was 12 years old. No driver’s license was needed in 1924. During the 1930s Perkins Dairy also sponsored an interleague softball team. The “Perkins Dairy Milkmen” took on such local opponents as “The Ritz Smokers” and “Sam Kennedy’s Onion Rings.” Summer fun in Clear Lake.
Ultimately, John and his wife Marlus took over the dairy operations, opening a dairy business which also sold ice cream on North Fourth Street near the location at the corner of N 4th Street & 1st Avenue N (the Clear Lake Bank & Trust northside parking area). The would later sell the dairy to P.E. Frettmem from Estherville.
Photo attached is from the Clear Lake Historical Society collection of an “unbroken” Perkins Dairy glass bottle.