Those Who Prey Together
I can remember when the Fuller Brush salesman came clear down to the South End. My neighbor bought her cleaning supplies from him. Not so much because they were cheap; she just felt sort of sorry for the guy. Not so many traveling salesmen down our neck of the holler these days — other than religious salesmen. A dead profession, gone the way of tinkers, the wagoneers who sold pots and pans. I got neighbors who still sell pot, but not the pans.
The new Willy Lomans down here are selling on E-bay. They find an item cheap at the garage sales, snap a digital photo, paste a description and then folks bid on it from Utsalady to Hong Kong. It’s a testament to the mighty consumer instinct down here that we still have junk to sell after years of shipping goods off island over the internet. You’d think garages would be empty, sheds bare, grown kids’ bedrooms an echo chamber of only memories. I guess not.
Trouble is, WE shop on E-bay now. Used to be one UPS truck burning up gas past Elger Bay Store, delivering to the dot.com retirees. Now there’s a whole fleet, brown shirted, short pants boyz, always in a major hurry. Add to that the Amazon Prime deliveries, Fed Ex, the USPS one day deliveries, what you got here is a product stream day and night and Sundays too.
The guy I bought my shack from in ’77 was a mail order salesman. Kind of a scam back then mostly. Snake oil through the mail. Satisfaction guaranteed. Just pay the shipping and handling, some unspecified amount slightly less than what a new car costs. Late night TV still does this, probably where my shack salesman ended up if not jail or a church somewhere economically distressed. Seems like folks like to prey on the poor. That, or just pray with them.
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Tags: Amazon's Foot in My Door, Death of the Salesmen