The Milkman comes home again...

A small rural home - December 1968 – 5 am .. the dog starts barking … oh yes it is the milkman Sammy Jr. dropping off the fresh milk bottles, and taking the empties. Here comes mom – time to get ready for school. A warm glass of milk for me, and my sister before we head to school. For breakfast, my parents enjoyed tea with fresh milk and sugar while bidding us an instructive school day. There was no refrigerator in the house, so we bought enough milk for the day. If there was any leftover milk, my mom would make yogurt using some existing probiotic culture. At the end of the day, we put the empty milk bottles out on our door step, ready for the milkman next morning. The milkman owned a small dairy farm at the outskirts of our town. Every day without fail the milkman made the rounds early in the morning – dropping off fresh milk bottles at doorsteps of all homes who had signed up for his service. And so went the routine …

One day we saw a new appliance at home, it was a refrigerator! It was life changing – the sugar ice cubes, tubs of ice cream … the list went on. Let’s get back to the milk. Since we now had refrigeration at home – we started to get enough milk for 2-3 days. We got a better price for the milk we bought, and the milkman’s visits reduced to a few a week.

As time went on, a large national chain grocery store opened in our town. Besides the standard fare, they kept all sorts of fresh perishable food – eggs, bread, vegetables, and yes milk. They had these large walk in refrigeration rooms – what an invention. My family started buying milk from the large grocery store as it was cheaper. The milkman stopped coming home – I asked my father what happened. Since the milkman did not have many homes to deliver milk to – he had to sell all the milk from his dairy farm to the grocery store, where it was pasteurized and refrigerated for families like ours. The milkman was not making good money anymore because the grocery store was buying milk from a lot of dairymen at competitive prices. Over time the milkman sold his dairy farm to a large business who had automated milking machines, and refrigerated milk tankers for delivery to grocery stores. I am sad to say that was the end of the milkman Sammy Jr’s trip to my home… No more milk bottle chores in the morning and night for my family. We also started seeing milk powder at grocery stores – what a concept – no refrigeration needed – milk when you need it – on your terms! 

The weekend grocery store trip was a family affair. It became a ritual – we met friends and family on our weekend trip to the store. And yes we came back with more goodies than we had planned – what fun .. a weekly outing to the grocery store! Going to the grocery store became so ingrained in our routine that we took it as a way of life….

Fast forward 50 years .. we are back to where we were .. the milkman comes home again .. do you recognize him? In suburbia the FedEx, UPS & USPS trucks make multiple trips a day to our neighborhood, dropping off boxes with goodies ordered online from Amazon, Talbots, Nordstrom, Express-Scripts,…. Some of us don’t go to the mall stores as often anymore, since what we need can show up on our doorstep via internet shopping – on our terms (frictionless, we can return it if we don’t like it, the stores never close – we can shop at 2.13 am,…). And yes – here comes Amazon Fresh!

The other day the same UPS guy from last week was at my front door again dropping off a box – we exchanged pleasantries. What is your name I asked him – “I go by Sammy Jr.”. I had a smile on my face – the milkman comes home again.