When I was a kid, my uncle used to tell me stories about the Iceman. He said that in his childhood a guy used to travel up and down the street with huge slabs of ice, delivering them to houses with “ice boxes”. Once electric refrigerators became commonplace, the iceman was ice out of luck and had to find a new vocation.
And now I find myself feeling like my uncle when I explain that when I was a kid the milkman used to deliver glass bottles of milk on a weekly basis to our house. I even show them where the little hatch was built into the external wall at my parents’ house for the deliveries. The milkman would open the little compartment, leave the bottles, and then later we would open the coonecting door from inside the kitchen and take the bottles out (this hatch also served as the emergency plan for entering the house when we were locked out…..I was small enough to fit through and come around to the back door and let everyone in). But as delivery and pasteurization became less costly and more efficient, the milkman went the way of the iceman.
This week it hit me: Molly and Emma’s version of milkman and iceman will be the postman. The need for mail delivered to your house daily seems already outdated. Bills can be both delivered and paid online; personal interactions are much more immediate and easier (no searching for a stamp) online; even receipt of personal checks are being sent more often online.
The USPS has noticed this too. It seems all but ineveitable that within the next year or two Saturday delivery will be halted. That whole thing about rain, and snow, and sleet, and hail also seems to have been given a bit of slack in the past few years as I have noticed the occasional suspension of delivery when the weather is less than ideal. Having a whole government supported enterprise dedicated to an outdated idea seems incongruous: wouldn’t it be money better spent to ensure everyone has access to a computer and an email account? The spillover effect (increased computer literacy, a population that is increasingly in touch and not separated) of diverting funds away from the USPS and to computer access would also be positive for the country.
I could send the above to your land address where you would receive it in 2-3 days, or I could find it online and add it into this post in about 30 seconds.
There’s definitely a nostalgic sadness when I mention that I think the days of post delivery are numbered. But like with the iceman and milkman, it’s just a sign that we’re finding more logical ways to get things done.
My parents’ home also contains a relic from the past. It is a metal lid that sits outside the back door -level with the ground. If you step on a corner lip, it lifts up and inside you find a large metallic bucket that apparently was used for trash (smelly type). It is really weird, I must say.