When I was a kid, growing up in a village in southern England, we had a milkman. Reg the Milkman delivered milk (and bread and sometimes eggs or orange juice) to the neighborhood, at the crack of dawn every day except Sunday. He rode about in a milk 'float' like this:
I have no idea where the name 'float' comes from. It was a little electric open-sided truck.
Photo by Brian Snelson, CC BY 2.0
You put out a note, rolled up in an empty glass milk bottle placed in a crate on the front step, and Reg would leave however much you asked for in the note, and take the empties. Almost everyone kept a little crate on the front step.
Once, my Mum asked me to write the note for Reg - just one pint today please Reg. And instead of a boring note, I wrote him a funny little poem asking for one pint. I think it was probably about 4 or 5 lines. Of course, we got our one pint. And then a few days later, Reg wrote a poem back and left the note in the crate with more fresh milk. Every so often Reg and I would write little poems about milk. This went on for years. I even sent back a poem for Reg from college.
But by the time I was in my teens, the supermarkets - offering plastic gallon jugs of milk, at a cheaper price - were causing major declines in milk deliveries. And at some point, Reg only came a few days a week, and then a few years later, not at all. Reg retired when I was in grad school I think, and there were no more notes, nor empty glass bottles to be picked up, sanitized, and re-used by the dairy.
This is not just a nostalgic note about milk getting warm on your doorstep (though I am feeling sort of wistful as I write this). It IS a note about trade-offs and asking where we can deliberately invest (rather than divest) from community attributes that benefit us.
My grandmother had a milk delivery for longer that we did. In her 80s, she was living alone in her bungalow, and we knew that the milkman would notice if her bottles hadn't been picked up, and he'd knock to check on her. He wasn't just a milkman, he was a community service.
During the pandemic, we realized again how important our neighborhoods are. People began checking on elderly neighbors to see if they needed things from the store during the lockdown. There were impromptu driveway parties, and we started ordering grocery deliveries again. Only this time, your groceries weren’t the result of a note and a wave to the same milkman you'd had for years, it was a nameless guy in a Kroger's truck who doesn't know your neighborhood or your neighbors.
Supermarkets are convenient for sure. We're all busy, and not having to go to several places to get different kinds of food and other goods is handy. And generally, the supermarket is cheaper. And that's important for many, many families in America (where I live now) and beyond.
But what other price are we paying for choosing convenience? What have we lost in this process?
Well, for one, the milk we had delivered was in glass bottles that got cleaned and re-used and re-used and re-used. No plastic waste. At all. I just did a quick mental calculation: I drink about a pint a week of milk (mostly just in my tea!) So that would equate to 12 gallon-sized plastic jugs a year, or 24 half gallons. Over 25 years since I last had a milk delivery, that would be 300 gallon jugs, or 600 half gallon jugs I've used. That would probably be about 30 large recycling bags - just for me.
The milk floats were also electric - WAY before EVs were all the rage, our milk was delivered by almost silent, non-polluting vehicles. We now mostly drive to the store in our gas-powered cars (for now).
And reliability - Reg never did not deliver the milk. You just never had to worry - if you couldn't get out and needed some bread, or butter, or eggs, you just had to leave a note (but preferably a poem).
Then there was Reg, and all his fellow milk deliverers. They were part of a community - poem-writing, grocery-delivering, old people-checking community connectors.
The little clank of milk bottles being left on your step was a comforting pre-dawn noise for many.
From my perspective, the value of this kind of service is undeniable. And in our current pandemic-emerging state, perhaps we’d be more open to modern versions of this. If so, what would it look like? How could we recreate or reinvest in similar community benefits now?
Is it promoting more CSA (community-supported agriculture) deliveries? Is it having more hyperlocal farm stands where you run into your neighbors? Or is it not food at all, but the neighbors all getting together to hire the same lawn guy? Or maybe it's reorganizing the postal service so that they come to your door and you can leave notes for them to pick up and let you pay for a package delivery...?
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know that having community connectors - whose name you know - is something I would value, and pay a little extra for, in our next chapter.
Ideas? Thoughts? (comments open to all subscribers on this post - free and paid)
I remember the milkman and leaving notes - fond memories. I totally agree that everything is convenience and it would be lovely to have electric deliveries. I know we have a local veg delivery van thats drops orders off. a little more personal than the local store.
PS. Glass milk bottles rock!