It’s been more than half a century since I've heard the clippity-clop of shod hooves and the frisky snort of a bread wagon horse.

There was a time, as a boy, when the sight of horses and wagons on our street was common. There was the milk wagon, the bread wagon, the rag man and the honey man, and in the winter, the odd sleigh ride on a hay wagon.

It was a ritual for kids to rush out to pet the friendly faces of the horses when they stopped.

The bread man would throw down the iron anchor on a long leather strap and load up his wicker bread basket with an assortment of bread, cookies, tarts, buns and cakes. A knock on the door brought mom to the front and the bread man rested his basket on his knee to show the goodies. What a delicious, tantalizing fragrance drifted from that basket.

On to the next house he went and his trusty old horse, knowing full well the route by heart, ignored the anchor and dragged it along behind the wagon. There is nothing as soft and funny to the touch as a gentle horse's snout, bristled long hairs and all.

Holding an apple flat on my palm, I would offer it to the old girl and she would very gingerly, with lips quivering, pick it up and put it in her mouth.

What an absolutely delicious, crunchy sound she made as she ground it up with those big flat teeth. Carrots went well, too, depending what I could get out of mom's vegetable bin.

About noon, the driver would rest in his wagon and eat his lunch. The horse got a bucket of water from a nearby house and had his feed bag looped over her ears. Oats for lunch — what a treat!

The earliest bread company I can remember was Canada Bread. Got their start at 93 Ashley St. in a big factory. First manager was F. J. Hannibal in the 1920s, second was T. Taberner in 1946.

The company followed E. M. Ewing's bread factory that sat on that site in 1912.

The old rusty brown bread wagons are long gone now, but Canada Bread Co. is coming back to the Mountain in a bigger way. We won't be feeding carrots to the trucks pulling in and out of their new factory on Nebo Road, I guess.

And we won't see the drivers with their wicker baskets peddling their wares door to door.

Gone are the clippity-clop and frisky snorts of the old horse comin' down the street, like it was.

My dad watched for the treasured droppings of doodoo left by old Nellie, those days. Quick with the shovel, it went straight under the rose bushes. A fringe benefit of the good old horse ‘n’ buggy days.

Mountain historian Colwyn Beynon can be reached at crsw389@sympatico.ca