MAN ABOUT TOWN: Future Postman Won’t Ring Twice

If my children were interested (they’re not) I could tell them all about the milkman we had when I was a boy. And although the next sentence will sound ridiculous to anyone over a certain age, here goes: A “milkman” is not someone who milks cows but rather someone who delivers milk door-to-door. Think pizza delivery man. Not a perfect analogy, since pizza is delivered on call whereas the milkman delivered to just about everyone in the neighborhood, taking all morning to do it. A better analogy is the mailman (more on that later).

Our milkman was Mr. Siler, and I can see him slowly making his way up our suburban street hill, his squat little truck dripping water from the melting ice in the back. He carried a rack that held glass milk bottles with little paper stoppers. Butter and eggs were also available but most folks just got milk.

The service was amazing. The dairy furnished preprinted lists, and my mother would mark how many items of each kind she wanted: 1 quart skim milk, 1 half gallon whole milk (for me), maybe some cottage cheese, etc. Mr. Siler would walk all the way to our side door, retrieve the list, go back to his truck, pack his delivery rack, return to the side door, knock and then enter, and if nobody called out, then go to the kitchen and put the milk in the refrigerator. On his way out he picked up the empty bottles (not for “recycling” but for sterilizing and re-using).

We locked our doors at night but certainly not during the day. What if the milkman needed to get in?

But over the years, more and more people began buying their milk at the grocery store (which was cheaper) until ultimately our diary, like all the other dairies, discontinued home delivery.

Happily, our children have in fact experienced a milkman first-hand. When we moved to Brussels, we found a note waiting from the milkman, explaining that he had delivered to the previous occupants and eagerly awaited our arrival. I wasn’t interested since we had a grocery story just up the street. Why complicate matters? But “our” milkman was an insistent salesman. He knocked on the door and explained to my wife that his eggs were far superior to those in the store. We tried them and were sold. He also sold delicious fresh strawberries in season.

Somewhat sadly, our Falls Church mailman, Dennis, recalls for me my memories of the milkman. Dennis is no different from the mailman of my youth – same leather mailbag, same door-to-door walking route. (Somehow we’re lucky enough to still have a mailbox at our front door instead of the newer “efficient” boxes at the street or in a common area.)

I give door-to-door mail service 10 years, max. After that you’ll still be able to rent a box at the P.O., or maybe walk or drive to a “common” area with a couple of hundred boxes. But I don’t see home delivery continuing in its present form.

What do you find in your mailbox each day? “Letters?” I think of a “letter” as a personal communication, usually with a hand-written address, and I don’t get any – well, maybe one every three months or so. Sure, I get “bills,” but less and less of those as they transition to online. And we get magazines – but the future of print magazines is hardly rosier than the future of print newspapers.

The only justification for six-day-a-week mail delivery is to get “letters.” (Bills can wait until Monday.) Since no one writes letters anymore, it makes sense to discontinue Saturday delivery. Mailmen work five days a week, so there must be a terribly inefficient overlap to maintain six-day service.

But I don’t see ending Saturday service as saving home delivery. Modern technology is hitting the P.O. on the left and the right. Maybe they’ll transition to three days a week. Maybe for a price, you could send a letter “special delivery” that would be received right away. (I checked the postal website, and they no longer offer “special delivery” – now it’s Express Mail, with next-day delivery for $17.50.

As the song goes (my favorite version is by Arlo Guthrie), “This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.” The milkman has gone; can the mailman be far behind?

Some day, many years from now, maybe my children will want to tell their own children what it was like in the days when the postman walked door-to-door and put envelopes into boxes at each house.

But the grandkids probably won’t be interested to hear about it.