Claire was out a few days ago and the phone rang — it rings a lot in our house. I pretty much never answer the phone — I figure if it’s important they’ll leave a message. But the ID that came up was someone we know, so for some reason I answered it…. of course it was a telemarketer. I hung up on him. I was rude. I told him I had more MasterCards than I knew what to do with.
Well, that got me to thinking about the ‘old’ days when I was growing up — of course there were no telemarketers then. The door-to-door salesman was the marketing man of his day — and — I don’t remember him ever coming during dinner.
Today, when someone knocks on our door, I usually check to see who it is — if I don’t recognize them, I usually don’t answer. But when I was a kid, seems like someone was always knocking on our front door… one of the neighborhood kids wanting to play, a neighbor wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, or very often, a door-to-door salesman.
Back then, door-to-door salesmen weren’t a bad thing and my mother and especially my grandmother patronized these salesmen.
Maysville, didn’t have a department store, or a convenience store, so these salesmen offered goods that weren’t readily available locally. When I was a kid, the Sears catalog was the “go to” place for shopping for things beyond the staples.
So my mom and grandmother did their at-home shopping with door-to-door salesmen. These salesmen filled a need in those days. Almost no family had two cars, my mom stayed home, and my dad drove the only car to work, so these salesmen made it easy to shop at the kitchen table. Things were simpler and trust among people existed back then.
I remember door-to-door salesmen coming to our door selling vacuum cleaners, scissors, encyclopedias, Bibles, dishes, magazines, and whatever. But I remember my grandmother always bought things from the Watkins man that came regularly to her house. I don’t know if Watkins products still exist, but they consisted of laundry soap (I think my grandmother referred to it as “washin’ powder,”) salves, camphor, vanilla, etc. Their number one best seller at gramma’s house was liniment — she was convinced that it would cure whatever ailed you. Grandma always made sure she had enough liniment to last until the Watkins man came again.
The other regular at our house was the Fuller Brush guy — I always liked him. He came to the door dressed in a coat and tie, carrying a big briefcase and usually a couple of mops and brooms under his arm. I was always fascinated when he opened his briefcase, at all the brushes and little cleaning tools he had available — he always had one for whatever my mother or grandmother needed to clean. I think they almost always bought something.
These days, the only person that comes to the door delivering items is the UPS person or the Amazon guy. We order online and they deliver the goods. Occasionally, we have children come to the door because they were sent out by their teachers, scout leaders, sports groups or others to raise money for various causes. Girl Scouts used to come to the door selling cookies, but now they hang out at supermarkets.
So what happened to those door-to-door salesmen? They’ve been replaced by those irritating telemarketers who call during dinner — they’ve replaced an entire culture of marketeers that we didn’t mind seeing at our front door.
The end of an era — just memories of days gone by…. and I guess so are the days of always knowing your neighbors.
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