Door-to-door

If you think back really long and hard, sometimes you can come up with things from your youth that seem to be from so long ago that they must be from someone else's youth altogether. For instance, I distinctly remember the show "Gunsmoke" when I was a kid. Except it wasn't the long-running television show that I remember, it's the radio show that my mother used to listen to before we even owned a television. Come to think of it, I remember a time when we didn't own a television, and then we did, and it was a big hit and all the neighbors came over to see it. The great thing (?) about early televisions was that every now and then they sort of blew up: some vacuum tube or other would burn out, which was no big deal, but it smelled like the doors of hell had been opened, and was usually accompanied by a bit of smoke and, of course, loss of television. You'd call the television repairman, and he'd come over and fix things, and in my memory the tv repairman was our most regular visitor, but that may just be my imagination. Do they still have tv repairmen?

I bring this up because I was looking at this article on the Fuller Brush Company. Now that brought me back, because I distinctly remember that our home town was lousy with Fuller Brush men, door-to-door salesmen who literally went door-to-door selling their wares. Even when I was the proverbial knee high, I wondered about the economics of brush sales, which sounded woefully penny ante, but the Fuller Brush company in one iteration or another has been around for over a hundred years, and as far as I could tell in my research, still sells door-to-door to this day. College graduates looking for employment in these bleak times should take notice. Fashions come and go, but people will always need brushes.

We also had a milkman for a while, who if I remember correctly left his wares on our fire escape, but that part may just be my imagination. The Avon company was in the next town over, so we had our fair share of Avon ladies who not only sold cosmetics but no doubt also acted as escorts to the Fuller Brush men. They certainly sound like a perfect pairing. And yes, we had the odd encyclopedia salesman, and I remember distinctly having an encyclopedia, so that guy did good work. I like to think I also remember a knife sharpener going up and down the streets too, and I think that's true. Then again, I also remember Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler, but that may just be because I've seen Oklahoma too many times.

It's interesting the things that pass through your mind, if you only let them.
.