THE DYING VESTIGES OF THE OLD WAYS

File this one under "stuff you just don't see anymore."

As I wandered out of my apartment this morning, half-asleep and workward bound, I beheld the welcome and very rare sight of an old-school seltzer delivery truck parked three buildings west of where I live.

I stopped to photograph and marvel at this vehicular anachronism, and when I saw the deliveryman unloading a crate of heavy glass and metal seltzer bottles, some of which appeared to be older than me I had to tell him I was glad to see folks like him still existed. The mighty-thewed Brooklyn Semite peered at me from behind his thick spectacles, gave me a wistful look and said, "I'm the last of a dying breed, my friend. The last of a dying breed."

And with that he climbed back into the truck and drove off toward Fifth Avenue, his vehicle and vocation dwindling into the horizon and the mists of time, no longer to serve the needs of once-homey neighborhoods now supplanted with soulless condos and Starbuck's coffee joints.