When I was a young boy many years ago, I had my very first job interview. My neighborhood friend told me he was giving up his paper route and asked me if I was interested in taking over the job. I told him I would think about it.
I was nine years old but felt a bit of pressure; I remember speaking to my father and he explained to me that work is a noble expedition, a venture and commitment that meant I had to behave responsibly and do the best job that I could do. After a few days, I called my friend and told him I would take over the paper route. The circulation supervisor at the Concord Monitor was Paul Gazaway and he called my house to set up a meeting. It was my very first job interview.
As I started my new job delivering the Concord Monitor newspaper many decades ago, I didn’t realize I was working a job that might not exist someday. My brother before me was a paperboy and so were his friends. My dad was a paperboy when he was young too. I just assumed it was something people had to do, so I did it.
We have made some changes in the way the Concord Monitor is delivered to each home. Very recently the Concord Monitor made a decision to introduce a new paperboy of sorts: the local mail carrier. Your paper arrives each day in your mailbox as a piece of postage.
That is quite a change compared to my early days as a newspaper boy for the Concord Monitor. The mail carrier doesn’t need to provide time-honored customer service for the Concord Monitor; the mail carrier doesn’t have to collect money or field comments and complaints about service or content within the Concord Monitor. Welcome to the age of technology, a time when the past has caught up with the future.
It is now that I reflect on the changes we have experienced with door-to-door service in our community, as well as in most places across our country. There was a time when we had a man delivering ice and milk to our front door. There was another gentleman that made and sold bleach door to door, 0.25 cents per quart according to my mother.
Then there was the chicken man. He brought live chickens to your house in his truck and allowed you to select the live chicken you desired to eat for dinner that evening, processing the chicken after payment was made. There was lots of need for cleaning rags because the heating systems spewed black dust around the homes, so another man sold rags to people’s homes.
Another delivery from the past was the coal delivery, a truck of coal that was dumped into your basement via a chute affixed to the back of the coal truck. There was the “Cushman” delivering pastry and bread too and lest we forget the Concord Monitor newspaper boy. Each and every household must have had much traffic from all of these delivery services that no longer exist.
Some of these front door delivery services also extended to local schools and businesses. I fondly recall my years over on Bradley Street at St. Peter’s School. A four-room school house that provided us with milk at recess. The milk was delivered by the Concord Dairy milkman in thick glass bottles. We would open the round cardboard seal on top of the bottle, insert a straw and draw circles with our pencils around the milk bottle cap onto paper. I recall some limited days when we were even allowed to buy chocolate milk too.
In a period of less than a century, we have evolved into modern society. Technology can be good but it also can be somewhat sad. Sometimes when you gain something you lose something. My grandchildren will never know the feeling of hefting a heavy glass pint of cold chocolate milk during school recess. They will never know the thrill of having an ice delivery man hand them a sliver of cold ice on a hot summer day. My grandchildren will never see the entertainment a milkman could sometimes provide as he juggled glass quarts of milk to entertain the children during his delivery.
When we lose some of these time-honored people we lose history. Some people lose careers, relationships and that personal touch that only a front door delivery can provide. When my children were young, we had a wonderful mail carrier. He was an old timer and engaged our young children when he could. We had a thick oak front door with a mail slot in the front hall. Our children would hear the mail carriers’ heavy boots as he walked onto our covered front porch. He would take a stack of mail, notably remove the rubber band, and send the mail quickly and efficiently through the front door mail slot. Our children would be waiting below as the mail scattered and gently floated atop our children. They would gather the envelopes and go to the front window just in time to see the uniformed mail carrier walk up the street with a smile and a wave.
We have a lot less people at our front door today. I know this because my security system alerts me to each visitor on my iPhone. If the visitor rings my front doorbell I can respond to them, even if I am a thousand miles away. After sunset my motion-activated exterior lights become bright and illuminate my walkway. We never open our doors to strangers, especially after dark.
Yes, we have lost something along the way. Technology has taken something from each of us. But it has also provided many benefits too.
As I conclude writing this edition of Vintage Views, I am watching my mailbox by the street on my iPhone. I eagerly await the mail carrier delivering the next edition of the Concord Monitor. I will greet him with some friendly banter from afar.