By JOHN GLADDEN
Staff Columnist

Several weeks ago, a story caught my eye, maybe yours, too.

It was a newspaper column by one of my favorite Ohio writers, retired Columbus Dispatch columnist Mike Harden, who still contributes to the paper each week.

Harden wrote about Gary Bocock, a milkman, who at last succumbed to progress and gave up the milk route he ran in Pickerington for 32 years, a route his father ran before him.

When the wholesale price of milk hit $3.20 per gallon, and diesel fuel reached $4.19 per gallon, there was no way he could keep delivering milk, eggs, butter, cheese and other staples to the doorsteps of his 150 customers.

“I’m paying $3.20 a gallon, and supermarkets have it on sale sometimes for $2.50,” the milkman told Harden. It’s hard to argue with the numbers.

In some cases, if a customer was not home, Bocock had a key to the house. He’d look in the fridge, see how much milk was left, and leave what was needed for the week. One long-time customer, 84-year-old Peggy Kose, had never bought an egg from a store in her life.

Time was, if you didn’t have a cow, this is how you got your milk. It was a beautiful way of life. It made me think how so many things are better today, but a few things aren’t. Service, for one.

There are people alive today in Medina County who remember small-town grocers who delivered, like Baish’s “Store at Your Door,” based in Litchfield Township. Not everyone had cars in those days, and many folks who did only had one, which someone likely drove to work. So, you called in your order to the grocery and it arrived at your door.

Now how much sense does that make? One guy, delivering groceries to several houses, one vehicle burning fuel. Today at stores, there are vast parking lots with hundreds of cars, each burning gas, dozens of people burning time, doing the job one guy used to do. Who decided this was progress? And we blame the oil companies for the price of gas. A certain cussed determination to jump in the car and go when and where we please is part of the equation. Our desire to choose from among a dozen varieties of applesauce instead of being content with one or two has something to do with our shopping habits, too.

Ironically, we live in a time when the “service” industry is a major leg of our economy: people doing jobs for us that we can’t or won’t do for ourselves. Believe me, I’m glad to call in a pro to take down a big tree or fix my furnace. When I find a mechanic, a florist, a plumber, who gives great customer service, I stick with them. In most cases, service is more important to me than price. There’s a difference between self-service — an oxymoron, if ever there was one — and doing something yourself. “DIY” suggests a decision you have made, out of necessity or aspiration, either way. When it comes to self-service, someone else has made the decision for you. Most likely, someone in a board room, who decided it cut too much into shareholder profits to have someone pump your gasoline and now you are going to have to pump it yourself. At least pizza places and the post office still deliver the goods, thank goodness.

Increasingly, we scan our own stuff, click our computer to do our banking, process our own pictures at the photo counter, visit an airport kiosk instead of a ticket agent, get our own food and clear our own table, go see the doctor when we are sick instead of staying put and the doctor coming to see us, and all drive to the store to get our milk and eggs for ourselves.

There is always an employee stationed at self-checkouts, and, if you are a shy person like me, whose mother raised to have good manners, you say, “Thank you!” when you pass the employee on your way out the door.

Only about the time you put your hand on the handle of the car door, do you stop and ask yourself: “For what?”

Gladden may be contacted at gladden@ohio.net or 330-721-4052.