As far as I can tell, at least in the world I live in (“world” denoting, of course, that circle of society, culture and urbanity that I move in every day in the, er, speckled group of islands in the Pacific Ocean), gone are the days of town milkmen who take away your empty bottles and leave fresh new milk in glass bottles in the wee hours of morning. After all, who knows what random person might sneak away one or two for a few extra pesos?
This time, I’m thinking in liters of water instead of bottles of milk.
As a general thing, my family uses a telephone (talk about modern) to dial the purified-water store near our subdivision to ask them to deliver 3 one-liter bottles of purified water to our doorstep. (Being a second-story house, accessible only by a steep staircase, this makes the delivery quite a feat.) We trust the water boys enough that the payment is left taped to the inside of our screen door for them even when we’re out. That’s the basic routine, and has been for years.
Earlier this week, for once, in the spirit of clearing up a tiny bit of space in our cluttered little home, someone put the empty water bottles outside the front door. There they stayed, quite forgotten, in the company of a little white dog and our passing shoe- or slipper-clad feet as we entered and exited our domain.
Came Saturday, and a late breakfast; one of the rare weekend moments when the entire family sits down together at the breakfast table. Then the little white dog barked twice. As far as we know, he only barks when playing with his inanimate toys that he pretends are… well, animate. Mom wondered aloud, “What’s he angry at now?” And then a voice at the gate! Dad went to investigate, and came back to us laughing.
The water boy? But we hadn’t called! Well, he’d told Dad, he had seen the bottles outside the door and had come by to take them away and leave fresh bottles of water in their place.
Wasn’t that just sweet?
After almost a year in the city – how precious this whiff of country charm, of modern milkmen.
random ramblemate 