Depending on the age of the house you live in you may have noticed an odd little compartment beside your back door, or the hallway door if you live in an apartment building.
This compartment had little doors of its own on both sides of the wall to allow access from the inside and outside of the dwelling. Of course, due to contemporary security issues, if it was ever there to begin with it is probably sealed shut or completely filled with brick and mortar.
In any case this compartment was called a “Milkbox”.
The Milkbox is a throwback to a bygone era when our old friend the Milkman would deliver fresh milk right to our door every day, much like the Postman who is still around today. I actually remember when the Milkman would make his rounds in a horse drawn carriage before they switched to the fleets of refrigerated milk trucks.
Security was not much of an issue back then so you could just leave your money in the Milkbox the night before to pay for the next day’s delivery.You would also leave your empty bottles in the Milkbox for the Milkman to take away. Oh yeah, the milk was delivered in heavy glass bottles which were subsequently sterilized and reused.
(Plastic containers containing Bisphenol A (BPA) was not so common back in those days. BPA is an estrogen mimicking compound found in most plastics which leeches into whatever contents are in the container. BPA mimics estrogens, binding to the same receptors throughout the human body as natural female hormones. BPA promotes human breast cancer cell growth as well as decreased sperm count, among other effects. The plastic used for medical tubing and equipment, and all soft drink bottles, water bottles, and yes even baby bottles, have high levels of Bisphenol A.)
You would have to get up very early in the morning to catch the Milkman making his rounds. He was all done by the time the rest of us woke up to share the family breakfast. Nothing like fresh wholesome milk to drink and to pour on our cereal to jump-start the day and help our children grow up strong and healthy.
There was no Bovine Growth Hormone or other modern chemical horrors we have become so accustomed to in the world of today. Drinking milk was a very different experience than it is today. I actually tried some the other day just out of nostalgia and to reminisce past memories. It was awful. I couldn't bring myself to drink it. Do we actually feed this stuff to our children?
Time marches on and the world is subject to inevitable changes. Unfortunately the inevitable changes are decidedly not inevitably beneficial. I remember back when it all started with the well publicized slogan “Better Living Through Chemistry”. The forces behind this slogan promised a chemically enabled paradise of convenience and practicality built from a new generation of synthesized materials. Little did we know at the time what a harbinger of doom this slogan truly represented.
And here we are just a few decades later. Chemicals have certainly infiltrated every facet of our lives but have they really made living better? Our entire planet is turning into a chemical soup that permeates our environment and us along with it. Now we produce ever more chemicals just to treat the ills brought on by the chemicals themselves. This is all good business for the chemical industry but it has proven a very nasty business for the rest of us. Convenience and practicality comes with a hefty price tag that we all have to pay.
Today we are faced with the next generation slogan - “Better Living Through Genetics”. No we don’t see this slogan heavily promoted because our awareness of past transgressions renders its message as too controversial. And yet this slogan is the quiet harbinger of a new ongoing future with a whole new set of horrors that are only beginning to emerge.
Public outcry is far more powerful than most people realize and it is a power we should learn to utilize together on a regular basis. It’s so easy. All it takes is a phone call, a letter, or a simple email, to make our feelings known to our government officials. Government WILL serve the people as long as the people are resolved to insist on the service we deserve. If we choose to remain silent we have signaled our compliance. Things will only continue to get worse and we have no one to blame but ourselves if we do not act to initiate change.
I can't imagine what it must be like for young people growing up in today’s world with a whole new concept of what is “normal”. When I was a young boy, honor, freedom, justice and integrity were the established norms. The most horrific thing you could see in the movies was something like "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein". Sex was synonymous with marriage. Every story had a moral - a lesson to be learned.
Today we glorify committing acts of unspeakable violence as fun, exciting, and desirable. Stupid crazy men that drink a lot are cool. Women are only desirable as sexual objects. Greed, corruption, and moral decay, are the established norms of the day - and if there is a moral to a story it goes something like "laugh while they bleed".
The sad part of this is that human nature really hasn't changed at all. People are basically the same around the entire world. The average person still values the concepts of love and family, of honor, freedom, justice and integrity as much as they ever did. The real culprit is mass media, or rather they few people that have monopolized control over the mass media. Greed, corruption, and moral decay, has been marketed to the public to alienate children from their parents so they can prepare the next generation for what is to come.
Progress can be a wonderful thing, but there are times when a small step backward can mean a giant leap forward to a future of true better living.
I miss all the things the Milkman represents, and I pray for the day we might see him again.
