Mr. Martin
In a time when local businesses delivered their goods locally, the Cushman Bakery truck climbed our driveway in Sherborn once or twice a week. As far as I can remember it was always driven by Mr. Martin who wore a white uniform with something resembling a captain’s sailing hat crowning his wide and friendly face. The milk deliveries were too early to notice and the newspapers were already screening my father’s gaze at the breakfast table by the time my day began. Yet I was often around to see the mid-morning bakery truck with Mr. Martin bounding from his driver’s seat ready to retrieve our favorite items.
Sometime in the mid-1960s Cushman was bought by the J.J. Nissin conglomerate. A close approximation of the old bakery items were still delivered by Mr. Martin, now driving a shiny new Nissin Bakery van. Yet it was different. With standardized items driven up our driveway the same as those found at MacArthur’s Market downtown, I had the impression that my mom was buying from the truck as a matter of inertia more than any sort of preference.
Simple market forces beyond the understanding of a teenage boy conspired to end these deliveries. I suspect my mother was not the only one seeing little value anymore. Local delivery vans were winding down in favor of shopping habits fueled by cheap gas, ubiquitous car ownership and supermarkets popping up like mushrooms. For Mr. Martin, the handwriting had been on the wall for many years.
I don’t remember when the Nissin deliveries stopped. In fact, if not for a photo from around that time, I probably wouldn’t have remembered Mr. Martin at all. The photo shows him selling grocery items from the open trunk of his car, and my mom must have been buying as a matter of charity by then since the same items were widely available at any local grocery store at a much lower price.
Mr. Martin Delivers Groceries
I suppose like many people facing the looming end of a career, Mr. Martin had some foreknowledge of what lay ahead. Yet he was approaching his later years and the notion of hiring someone with bread delivery experience hardly qualified him for the emerging job market. He was a delivery man. What else could he do?
One the day my mom met Mr. Martin at MacArthur’s stocking up inventory for his trunk, and the pathetic story concluded for us. She didn’t tell him to stop. The shear embarrassment did that.
The economy was in pretty good shape at that time, and I suppose Mr. Martin could have found a job doing other things – and probably did – yet he clearly preferred life on the road and interactions with individual customers – at least until it became embarrassingly clear how they were buying out of pity far more than convenience.
I doubt I’ll ever learn what happen to Mr. Martin and the most I can do is learn the lessons here – that no matter how good I am at anything, the world can render my skills obsolete. As I’ve written elsewhere, such obsolescence creeps up on us slowly, and it’s best to believe that this is happening all the time – even when less than obvious.
