His father Paul had counseled him to build his own firm based on manual labor - in the nineteen-sixties, supermarkets were edging out the milkmen. It was grandfather Bisig who in his twenties had laid the cornerstone for the business in 1900. The innovative farmer Meinrad Joseph Bisig, son of an immigrant from Einsiedeln, had received Louisville’s first official milkman permit. He and his American wife Mary Josephine Clephas from Louisville brought up eight children, managed an 19 acre (eight hectares) piece of land, and had eight or nine cows.
In the beginning, Meinrad Joseph brought the milk to customers in his own horse-drawn wagon filled with large cans, moving from house to house to fill the people’s pitchers. All was still quite simple and people were not spoiled. But in 1912, Meinrad Joseph began to use milk bottles and also pioneered pasteurizing the milk. “Soon we enjoyed a good name as reliable providers of high-grade goods.” Two sons, Paul A. Bisig, born in 1910, and his brother Tony soon followed in the milkmen’s footsteps. Mike tells the story: “In the 1920s and 1930s milk delivery started at two in the morning, later though at four or five o’clock - and that for seven days a week.”
When the founder of the firm died in 1943, Paul and his brother took over the firm and enlarged it: “Father served private customers, my uncle served hospitals and firms. In 1960, we were first in having a rolling frigidaire in our truck.”
In summer, Louisville is quite hot. Cooling was therefore of prime importance. For decades, the wagons had to be filled with ice. All over town there were icehouses that sold the precious item. “I remember well how time-consuming cooling was. Father had developed an isolating milk box. He could leave it at the home of customers since the box kept the contents cool for some four to five hours. Today it can hardly even be imagined!”
At the age of eight Mike, born in 1950, was taken along on milk tours. In 2001 his father Paul Bisig died at the age of 91. “It was a hard blow for me; he had been a great fellow, a passionate milkman. He delivered milk for 80 years.” Until 2001, and often helped by his son, Paul Bisig served his faithful customers - 350 to 400 Louisville households - and supplied them with milk, cottage cheese, cheese, butter and yogurt as well as eggs. After his father’s death, Mike Bisig continued the rounds as milkman besides his job. “Customers asked for it. I didn’t want to disappoint them. The milk business simply was my line of work.”
The farewell tour to the 80 customers in the Highlands and in Audubon Park stirred emotions. A journalist accompanied Mike, the milkman, on his last tour and in an article in the Courier-Journal describes the end of an era. It was a homage to the milkmen of the Bisig family that were known all over town. “It hurts to have to give up a family tradition of a hundred years. But it was just time!”
Mike and his wife live in a pretty house in the east of the city, in Seneca Vista, and they are proud parents of four children and by now have seven grandchildren. Olivia, the youngest, is visiting her grandparents on the morning of the interview - a little sunshine. Mike: “My grandparents had 60 grandchildren. You can imagine how very large our family is today. Many of them are living in Louisville. I know them all, the first, second, third, and fourth degree cousins!”
The family’s history is kept up. What Mike doesn’t know, his cousin, the physician Tom Bisig, will add: “Our great-grandfather Anton Bisig hailed from Trachslau near Einsiedeln. When he was twenty, he immigrated to Louisville. There he married a girl from home - Magdalena Kaelin from Einsiedeln.
They settled in Crestwood of Oldham County. But Magdalena died from dysentery at age 24. In 1875, Anton married Regina Schuler, also a woman from central Switzerland. They had four children, among them my grandfather Meinrad Joseph Bisig. But this woman, too, died young from emaciation at age 42 - so that my grandfather and his brother Fred grew up in the home of an aunt on the Schuler farm in Crestwood. Grandfather had to milk the cows.
Over and over again we heard the story how he, as a 19 year-old lad, had gone on horseback 25 miles to a festival in the city of Louisville and met my grandmother, Mary Josephine Clephas from Louisville. She was three years older than him. It was love at first sight, and he married her. The young woman preferred, however, living in the city instead of the countryside. Therefore the young couple rented property in the Highlands on 1923 Newburg Road.”
It is very nice to listen to Mike Bisig - he is a good storyteller. Besides, his love for the family and the milk business, the liking of his job becomes clear in which he is greatly assisted by his sons Todd, Brad and Adam. “I learned the construction business from Italians here in Louisville. I started at Mazzolis with a pushcart and a trowel. ‘Learning on the job’ was the motto. I just love working with my hands.”
