Sweet's Dairy

Shirley M. Sweet had the only cream-top bottle on MDI and Hancock County. These very fancy and expensive bottles came along some time in the late 40's. Shirley is the son of MC Sweet and brother of HC Sweet.

Shirley served in WW1. He took over Old Orchard Farm from Marcus. He had 15 to 38 cows – milking 18 at one point. Around 1952 he went to the Bangor Hospital for a blood test for an insurance policy where they discovered that he had Undulant Fever otherwise known as “Bangs Disease”. It is a bacteria that is transmitted between animals and humans through the consumption of meat and dairy products. Shirley had to sell his herd as a result of that diagnosis, perhaps a state law – I'm not sure. So in 1952 he took the 15 cows he had at the time and pasted numbers that he cut from a calendar on the cow's butt, had them in their stalls in his barn and put them up for sale, apparently sold them to a farmer in Garland for 30 cents on the dollar.

At some point in his career, Shirley was a meat cutter at Cunningham’s IGA in Ellsworth, at some point he also was a meat cutter at Butterfield's Market. I would think that testing positive for Undulant Fever would mean that he would be able to hold a job as a meat cutter but maybe I don't understand the pathology of the disease.