Columnist John Moore has some milk bottles to return, but the milkman no longer stops by his home. Courtesy John Moore

Social media, for all of its faults, every now and then offers something worthwhile.

I’m a member of a group on Facebook called, “Dull Men.” The only pre-qualification to join this throng of staid fellas is to publicly admit you are dull. And you do that by joining.

 Often, one of the guys will post a picture of something he either can’t identify or doesn’t understand.

 It’s the perfect venue for this sort of thing. Men love nothing better than telling you all about something. Even if they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Women figured this out a long time ago. If the girls want some alone time, they can put a broken lawnmower at the feet of a bunch of guys and it keeps them occupied for hours.

Recently in the Dull Men group, I noticed a photo of milk door. Your house has to be pretty old to have one, and usually it’s a city house not a country house.

Milk doors used to be a fairly secure way for the milkman to drop off fresh milk early in the morning and pick up the empty bottle or bottles to take with him.

 These young folks like to think they thought up recycling, but we were doing that with just about everything way before plastics came along and started filling up landfills.

But I digress.

The milk door usually was attached to a prefabricated box, designed to accommodate the needs of the household. That could be one bottle a day or five.

 Home milk delivery and milk doors predated birth control by quite a bit.

 Some fancy milk doors and boxes were split level, allowing for multi-family dwellings. Each level had its own door and was designated.

 Families like the Waltons used to be more common. If someone had a home, and another family member didn’t, they often joined up and made space. Hence, the need for multiple milk doors and boxes.

Another home feature you don’t see much anymore are fireplace doors on the outside of the chimney. A photo of one of these appeared on the Dull Men page. A gentleman bought a house with one, but couldn’t make the connection to the fireplace.

One of my many jobs when I was a kid was to go outside during the winter and scoop out the ashes. The outside door allowed for you to avoid making a mess in the house.

I’m not sure why builders stopped putting outside fireplace doors in a home. Probably because people have fake logs these days.

Recently, I saw where they now have fake, fake logs. People buy a TV screen with 3D logs and flames that look real. The unit includes holes where hot air blows out.

For the life of me, I don’t know why anyone would want fake logs; much less fake, fake logs. What’s next? Fake windows with video of some fella out in the yard splitting your fake wood?

Experiencing real life used to be built into every house. That was the case with another picture on the Dull Men page. A lady (some guy’s wife) put up a picture of a box with a rope on top. It was behind a door in the kitchen.

About a thousand people let her know that the house they’d purchased has a dumb waiter.

A dumb waiter is an elevator used to move goods between floors. Usually, food between the basement and the kitchen.

I never knew anyone who had a dumb waiter.  Usually, servants used them. No one I knew was rich, and the only servant my family had was me. When I wasn’t cleaning out the fireplace using the outside door, I was turning the TV antenna at our Beech Street home in Ashdown, Arkansas.

I suspect that cable TV and other wall outlet connections will be one of the next home features to become extinct. You also can add telephone jacks to that list.

Today, WiFi provides wireless opportunities to watch whatever shows and programming you desire. Same is true for social media groups that provide an opportunity to see what others are up to.

Often, they’re just trying to understand what’s around them. Thankfully, there will always be plenty of guys to help deliver an answer or two. Even if the milkman isn’t one of the fellas delivering one.

By John Moore, owner of One Moore Production

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