The Snow Cone Man

As I was leaving a subdivision this afternoon, the snow cone man was coming in.  I smiled as waved as I always do for the snow cone man.

I turned seventeen years old the month I left home in 1971 to sell books door to door for the Southwestern Publishing Company.  I said goodbye to my parents in  Nashville and prepared for a week of intense sales training.  I realized some time later that it was a week of intense indoctrination.  I don't fault the company for that as Southwestern existed to sell books and to prepare the sales force to sell as many books as possible.

The indoctrination included  the "work ethic" prescribed by the company and drilled into the heads of the sales people.  "Knock on  the first door no later than 8am. Knock on the last door no earlier than 8pm.  Do this six days a week.  Go to church on Sunday morning because it looks good in the community.  And go to your sales meeting on Sunday afternoon.  Do this for no less than twelve weeks."  I only took one day off the entire summer. It was a district-wide fourth of July party at the Kentucky Lake.  All day I felt like I was playing hooky. I was relieved to get back to work the next morning.

The work was tedious and difficult.  I had never faced so much rejection in my life. We were trained to not take it personally, but it was hard not to since they were talking to  me. I had memorized several sales pitches.  There were two primary pitches.  The first one was the pitch to get in the door.  The second one was the pitch to present and sell books once I was in the door (which actually happened from time to time). It's been a long time, but I think I averaged getting invited in about every six houses. I don't remember what my closing ratio was once I got in. I still do some of the things I learned. When I ring the doorbell of someone who doesn't know me, I walk back down the steps and keep my back to the door until they answer.  Then I turn around slowly to give them time to get a good look at me. If I know their name, I use it as soon as possible. If not, I introduce myself and state my purpose in being there.

Throughout the summer I found myself envying different people for the way they made a living. There was the nice man who drove a dump truck who gave me rides as often as he saw me.  During those rides I was homesick for when I drove my dad's dump truck the previous summer.  And I thought "while I'm knocking on doors, all  he has to do is pick up a load of gravel, deliver it to the job site and do this over and over all day".  Another job that I yearned for was the man who held the slow/stop sign for the road construction.  That's all he did all day. While I knocked on doors and suffered all kinds of abuse, he talked on his walky-talky and turned a sign to either slow or stop. He did that all week and then he got paid.

But the man I envied the most, the job that I would have loved to have had that hot summer was to have been the snow cone man.  While I was knocking on the next door, I could hear him coming up the street.  The calliope type music was unmistakable. His brightly colored truck with multi-colored spouts or liquid happiness was unmistakable as well.  And even before he stopped, the children were pouring out of their homes running to the truck. They stood in line on their tiptoes waiting for their turn at the truck. As the snow cone man handed them their treasure, they handed him money. Just like that they just handed him money.  And were thrilled to part with it. He never asked for a thing.

The last two weeks of the summer, John and I reunited in Owensboro with Dave to sell one more week and then to deliver out books.  We all confessed and laughed that we had abandoned our pitches and were just trying to end the summer and go home.  One afternoon, instead of the pitch to get in, a pitch that cloaked what I was actually selling, at the door I asked the resident, "Do you want to buy a family Bible?" "No."  "Do you want to buy a Bible story book for your children?"  "No."  "Would you be interested  in a medical dictionary?"  "No,." "Well, may I use your restroom?"  As she was closing the door in my face, she said, "No sonny; we have one of those, too."

I've never actually bought a snow cone from a mobile truck.  But there's one parked at a local Chattanooga park.  As the nice man hands me my cone and I hand him the money, he's probably thinking, "I don't know what he does for a living, but it's got to be better than this."