When Oren Artlip looks out the window of his Roxhill home, he recalls the White Center Dairy he owned and operated there at the tail end of the Great Depression.

Now of course, the former 10-acre farm is a honeycomb of houses, lawns, driveways and streets. Westwood Village is a block to the north and Roxbury Street is just south.

Artlip, 89, used to own the land between 25th and 26th avenues southwest, from Barton to Roxbury streets. It was mostly woods all around the place back in 1939, when he acquired the dairy from his father-in-law. The White Center Dairy was one of about 100 small dairies in King County at the end of the Depression.

Black-and-white Holstein cows were in the dairy's herd because they produce a high volume of milk, Artlip said. He kept smaller, light-red Jersey cows for their high butterfat content, which gives milk a nice color, he said. He also had a few fawn-color Guernsey cows with white markings.

There also was one bull.

Artlip started with eight cows and gradually increased the herd to 30, which he kept in one big barn. He fed them hay from Ellensburg.

Although the headwaters of Longfellow Creek were close by, the cows drank city water piped to the dairy.

Dairy cows have to be milked twice a day and the first was at 4 a.m. In the beginning, Artlip milked the cows by hand but later got a milking machine, which cut milking time to about 90 minutes.

The raw milk had to be bottled and loaded on a truck for delivery. Meanwhile all of the machinery had to be thoroughly cleaned after each milking. Government inspectors frequently checked dairies for cleanliness, he said.

The going rate for milk was 10 cents a quart and 32 cents a gallon. At one time, Artlip delivered milk to about 300 customers in White Center, Burien, South Park and West Seattle. Some customers wanted pasteurized milk, which he bought at the Charmland Dairy in Youngstown and then delivered.

A place called the West View Dairy in West Seattle had no cows but had equipment to pasteurize milk from other dairies, he said.

He usually finished his deliveries at about 3:30 p.m., just in time for the 4 p.m. milking. The milk taken in the afternoon was refrigerated and added to the next morning's delivery.

Artlip grew up in Minnesota and Michigan, but attended college in South Dakota, where he met is future wife. His new in-laws moved to Seattle and purchased the dairy. Artlip and his new wife followed them west.

The Depression was still dominating the country's economics when Artlip took over the dairy. Hard work kept it going until World War II.

"The war changed everything," Artlip said.

The federal government froze milk prices during the war. But the price of cattle feed doubled. Artlip was forced to sell the dairy in 1944.

That's when Artlip decided to go into the grocery business. He got a job at a White Center store called the Locker Market, where he learned how to cut meat from owner Troy Thomas. Later he bought the store's equipment, then he and business partner Bud Atwood started the Ranch Market at 9660 16th Ave. S.W. Artlip was the butcher and produce man while Atwood ran other parts of the store.

In the early 1950s, Artlip bought out his business partner and had a new building constructed on 15th Avenue near Southwest 100th Street. It's the building where the Dollar Store is today.

The new structure was named Oren's Food Mart and most of the Artlip family worked there, including Oren Jr., who was 6 years old when he started. By the time he was 13, young Oren was ordering all of the store's merchandise from wholesalers.

Back then, customers could order specific cuts of meat from the butcher rather than pre-cut, plastic-wrapped meat. Oren's Food Mart also offered free delivery.

In the days before credit cards, many customers used to put their purchases on a store charge account and pay it off as they could. Artlip continued the practice long into the 1960s.

"A lot of 'em never paid," he said.

But Artlip faced more sweeping financial challenges from national chain grocery stores that had begun moving into White Center.

"I had more competition than I had customers," he said.

Artlip had completed the arc of a working life. He'd gone from dairyman to grocer, from producing milk to selling other people's dairy products, not to mention a banquet of other foods. He finally sold his store in 1977.

In 1998, he retired as a driver for Community Services for the Blind at Northgate. He drove blind and visually impaired people to the homes of other blind people needing help.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at tstclair@robinsonnews.com or 932-0300.