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Written By John R. Greenwood
Photos provided

Dake Milk Plant circa 1940

Gone but not forgotten is the Saratoga Dairy. When the city of Saratoga Springs built its new water treatment plant at 111 Excelsior Ave in 1935, the original 1871 Pumping Station, just 100 yards south of it, was sold to Charles V. and Percy Dake. The building was modernized and repurposed into the Saratoga Dairy. The dairy operated from that location from 1938 through 1994, when Stewart’s moved dairy operations to their distribution plant in Greenfield. According to Roohan Realty’s webpage, the current site at 131 Excelsior Ave will be called North Spring Run, a luxury 102-unit apartment complex.

I spent the majority of my 20s and 30s in and around the Saratoga Dairy. Every time I drive down Excelsior Ave, I feel a responsibility to pay tribute to the place that had such a profound impact on my life. I’m certain there’s others out there who feel the same.

Saratoga Dairy is where names like Barton, Reid, Clark, Stevens, Dahl, Staulters, Fitzgerald, Hyde and Price became my mentors. These names barely scratch the surface when it comes to naming the hardworking and dedicated men and women who taught me the value of a hard day's work done the “right” way.

My first adult wake-up call took place less than a year after I graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1973. It was day one of my new job as a milk receiver at Saratoga Dairy. Ed Stevens, a supervisor of the highest caliber, asked if I had taken algebra in high school. Although the answer was yes, panic set in. You know that one course you hated and questioned why you waste your time on something you’ll never use in a lifetime? Thankfully, Ed was the ultimate teacher and sensed my discomfort. As he patiently walked me through the formula needed to standardize whole milk, I began to regret replacing homework with Wednesday pitcher nights at the Hub. After washing a few weeks' worth of truck tankers and milk tanks, I began to realize that maybe when Bill and Charlie Dake offered to send me to college months earlier, my answer of, “No thank you, I want to work with my hands,” may have been premature. I’m now in my 70s, and in retrospect, I can confidently say I have zero regrets in my decision. The life lessons, friends, experiences, and stories I’ve collected in my blue-collar journey are priceless assets that I cherish daily.

Aerial View
June 25, 1983

I performed every job that building threw at me. I was a milk receiver and a machine operator. I bagged milk powder and ice cubes. I made and boxed 1lb., 2lb. tubs, and 64lb. blocks of butter, then wheeled them into a walk-in freezer set at ten below, wearing paper-thin, perspiration-soaked dairy whites. That job was a true character builder. I became skilled with hand trucks, pallet jacks, and dairy hooks. I washed more equipment than any dishwasher in an August restaurant could wash in a lifetime. I learned how to make vats of chocolate milk, eggnog, buttermilk, and New Country Yogurt.

One of the dirtiest and most dreaded jobs occurred when the plant’s conveyer/chain would jump out of its track due to being overloaded or iced up. The chain was the heart of the plant and moved stacks of milk and empty crates from the filling machines through the storage cooler, and out to the loading dock and back into the plant. When the chain was down, everything came to a screeching halt. The stacks of milk that were on the chain would have to be pulled off with a dairy hook. If the maintenance men in blue were in another part of the plant, anyone brave enough would jump down into this smelly grease pit where the chain’s driver motor was. You’d have to loosen the chain just enough to slide it back into the channel. Once the chain was back on and tightened, you’d emerge from the pit with your dairy whites covered from head to toe in black grease and shivering like a wet Chihuahua. A circle of coworkers would cheer sarcastically because now they had to pull all those milk stacks back on the track and start all over. Those were the days that kept the frustration level high and common. Working weekends, holidays, nights, and long hours were the norm; easy days a rarity.

I was barely twenty when I got careless one day and lost my right index finger in a 1940s butter churn that resembled a civil war cannon. The experience left me with the nickname “Johnny Nine Fingers” and paved the way to a career preaching driver and work safety to the hundreds of truck drivers that I trained in my 35 years in the Stewart’s Hauling Department.

The purpose of this tribute is to acknowledge every person that crossed my path at the Saratoga Dairy. They provided me with a life filled with friendships, camaraderie, laughter, mechanical skills, work ethic, scars, and a deep appreciation for the working man or woman.

I may have retired white-collar, but I will always be blue-collar from the tip of my steel-toed boots to the top of my bump-capped, hair-netted head.

RIP SARATOGA DAIRY.
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES.

- “Johnny Nine Fingers”