time on the back. Please come back at that time, or you can wait” She graciously stepped back and closed the door. My card read, “#4 13:00”
A very tall lankly guy stood next to me, “What’s yer number, bud?” I answered, “four”. He slammed his fist against the wall and exclaimed, “This is bull-shit. I was the first here, before any of you piss-on’s. I ain’t get’n no 9th place. The hell with this.” He exited, slamming the door hard behind him. Three more stomped out. I quietly left, killed time and returned on time for my 13:00 appointment.
The hallway door was standing open and the room was empty. I entered and approached the inner door as it opened. A short over weight man with a head of slicked downed brown hair dressed in a gray vested business stepped into the room, “Nice to see you young man, I am Mr. Green.” He spoke in a measured manner. “Good to see you are on time. Come in.” He stepped to a lounge chair, took a seat and gestured for me to take the facing chair which I did. I looked hard at this man trying to vision him as a hardened Marine Corps Captain. It didn’t fit. Yet, his demeanor and apparent need for control did.
I introduced myself giving a brief outline of my eighteen years and navy service and then waited. He studied me for what seemed a long time before saying, “I sell magazines and if I take you on you’ll be selling them for me. For that, you get a commission less your living expenses, such as your hotel room and two meals a day. If you want more to eat, you pay for it. You keep yourself and your clothes clean. There are two ways to get fired. One is being unshaven or dirty and the other if your commissions don’t cover your expenses.” He hesitated, then continued. “You will be one of a team of eight. We travel in two station wagons and go from city to city. You will be given one of these,” he handed me a soft list of twenty or more magazines ranging from Life to Reader’s Digest and others I did not recognize. Opposite each name was a number under a column headed, “Points”. He gestured toward the folder, “Those points are what you sell. This is a contest. When you reach a plateau your commission goes up. The higher points you earn the more you make. Got it?” I studied the listing and saw that “Life” had the lowest points while an unknown had the highest. I asked why? Mr. Green responded, “The higher the points the more the commission. Your sales pitch is to sell the highest point magazines so you can earn more points on the National Literary promotion.” Again he asked, “Got it?” I nodded. He stood, opened the door and said, “Be here tomorrow morning at 7:00 O’clock, clean clothes, clean shaven and ready to leave.” I was now a magazine salesman.
We traveled East from Denver stopping to sell in small cities. At some of the smaller cities, actually towns, we’d literally “work through the town”. That is, each one of us would be assigned to a side of a street that ran through the town and we’d start knocking on doors. When the street ran out the wagons would pick us up and off we’d go to the next town. At large cities, St. Louis for example, we’d check into a hotel or motel, for two or three days with 3 or 4 guys to a room using roll-away beds. We’d start knocking on doors at 9:00 a.m. and go until 4:00 p.m. If the sales for the day did not meet the quota set by Mr. Green we would be again door knocking from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Many towns had ordinances requiring a license to peddle door-to-door. In those cases we’d work the town in a few hours and be on our way avoiding the cost of the license. In a small town in Tennessee Mr. Green had again skipped the license and distributed us among the town. A couple hours later a police car pulled to the curb and signaled for me to get in, which I did. Two more stops and two more of the crew got in. From there we went to the police station where we were put in a holding cell with the other five members of the crew. We were fingerprinted, photographed and placed two to a cell measuring about 6’ x 8’ with two steel bunks and an all metal wash basin and toilet. Mr. Green was busy trying to negotiate our release, but he had no success until the next morning when he paid the fine of several hundred dollars and we were released.. From then on we skipped towns that required a peddler’s license.
I was with Mr. Green’s group for about four months during which time we sold magazines in major cities in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. When we reached Richmond, Virginia I owed Mr. Green for my room and meals and he fired me. It was then that I joined the Army Air Corps. I was not a successful magazine salesman.
END
VIGNETTE NO. V
STOLEN IN DENVER
Enroute Davis Monthan AFB to Ellsworth AFB
It was winter of 1955, the Cold War was at its hottest, and I was heading-up a team of eleven that was installing a Supply System on several Strategic Air Command Bases in support of the new B-52. The systems were called Card-a-Type Systems made by IBM and were in the in-between time of punched cards and the first computers. Essentially, they were “programmed” punched card systems controlled by large and very complex wired control panels.
Our modus-operandi was one of frog-jumping. That is, we would start one base, move on to the next, bounce back to the first, jump to the third and so on. It meant a lot of travel, but the bases came on-line in the shortest period of time.
This story takes place when the advance element consisting of myself and two technicians were traveling in an unmarked station wagon from Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona to Mountain Home AFB in Mountain Home, ID. The weather was horrible and travel was slow. In Denver because the snow was deep and coming down hard we opted to spend the night in a hotel and parked the station wagon on the street. In the rear of the station wagon was all of our technical materials including wired control panels, punched cards and manuals. While the materials were critical to our mission they were not, by themselves, classified.
The snow continued all night and in the morning when we approached the car from it’s rear we could see the rear window had been broken out and snow was in the rear of the wagon where our materials should have been. We anxiously dug through the snow hopefully looking for our materials. No luck, everything was gone.
We hurried back to the hotel and I called the police giving them full details of who we were, what we were about and how necessary it was that the materials be immediately found and returned.
It was if by magic that before we could check-out a police cruiser pulled up outside and a sergeant announced they found the materials in an alley. We joined the officers, went to the cruiser and examined the returning materials. Not only was everything there, it was also neatly stacked and absolutely dry! Not a speck of moisture anywhere. It was found in an alley? I don’t think so.. It is mysterious how things can just disappear and reappear without an explanation. Could there be more story to this story? I think so.
END
VIGNETTE NO. VI
A BOARING TIME IN FRANCE
Fontainbleau & Bourron Marlotte, France
It was a warm sunny day in early Spring of 1955 while I was stationed at Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE) in Fontainbleau and living in Bourron Marlotte when my family of my wife, Pat, and our four young children went for a picnic in the Fontainbleau Forest. The forests of France are very much unlike our National Forests in that they have been forested for hundreds of years and are clear of all under-brush. Add to that the habit of the local people of picking up any all fallen twigs or limbs and you have a clean carpet on which the forest sits. It is picturesque, quiet and home to birds of all kinds, squirrels, deer and other animals, including Wild Boar.
While it was in our hopes that we would encounter birds, squirrels and deer it was not in our slightest expectations to meet a Wild Boar and certainly not more than one. But, that is what happened.
We had
