My biggest memory of my family's refrigerator when I was a kid was the constant presence of THE COW--our nickname for the humongo-gigantic container of milk that occupied the top shelf.  There were 6 kids in my family, and our parents were firm believers in a heavily dairy based diet.  Our milkman (the guy who used to deliver milk door to door throughout the suburbs once or twice a week) would bring a large (5 gallons? 8 gallons?) plastic container of milk once or twice a week, and we would put it in the refrigerator's most accessible spot, its spigot perched right at the shelf's edge. we also had a regular guy show up to pick up dry cleaning, and another guy to take away our perishable garbage (which we kept outside in a receptacle below ground level) to feed the pigs on his pig farm.