The woman looked at me for a second. It was not a nice look.
“I’m Margie,” she said. “I answer the phone for Dipstick in there and go out for beer. He couldn’t make a living selling used cars because he was too big a creep even for that, so now it’s encyclopedias. What else would you like to know?”
“Can I really expect to make as much as a hundred twenty-five dollars a week in the exciting field of encyclopedia sales?” I asked.
“Wear loose-fitting shoes and don’t get too close to the door so you don’t get your nose broke when they slam the door in your face,” said Margie, as she turned and walked into room 452, slamming the door in my face.
I went back to Ronnie’s apartment and told him I had a job.
“Doing what?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I had to say, “but can I borrow your Weejuns to wear to work in the morning? Mine aren’t broken in yet.”
Dipstick’s (Zorro’s) name turned out to be Howard Barnes. He was one mean son of a bitch in the afternoon. At seven in the morning, he was Hitler with a hangover.
The next day at 7:00 A.M., four budding encyclopedia salesmen stood in front of Hitler. Two of the guys looked older than I was. They were probably in their early thirties. One continuously sniffed on a Vick’s inhaler. Another one wore a short-sleeved shirt and had a tattoo of a rather sinister-looking snake on his left forearm. I didn’t know much about the exciting field of sales at that point, but I did know having a tattoo of a snake on your arm probably wouldn’t help in winning the confidence of a potential customer.
The other guy looked to be about my age, or a year or two older. He was quite skinny, and his hair was in a state of complete anarchy. It looked like a clump of palm trees just after a hurricane hit.
The tiny office was hot and filled with Chesterfield smoke. Howard sat behind his desk and looked us over, much as a person would look over a plate of fried rat.
“I’ll be surprised if this goddamn group can sell one goddamn encyclopedia,” Harold began.
His eyes stopped at Kudzu Head.
“What’n hell’s your name?” he asked the kid.
“Larry,” the kid answered.
“What the hell kind of hair is that, Larry?” Howard asked in a manner that made it quite clear he didn’t like the name Larry or anybody named Larry.
“Just my hair,” said Larry.
“I’ve seen better-looking hair than that on fatback,” Howard sneered, despite the fact Larry bore no resemblance to John Cameron Swayze.
“Awright,” he said next, “everybody downstairs and into the van.”
I entered the exciting field of sales for the first and last time at approximately 8:30 A.M. in Pinewood Hills, a subdivision in suburban Atlanta. I was wearing the only suit I owned, a blue one. I wore a red-and-white striped tie and a white shirt, oxford cloth with buttondown collars, neither one of which was frayed, and Ronnie’s loose-fitting Weejuns.
I carried my sales kit, which was nothing more than a folded poster that showed a picture of Howard’s encyclopedias, and about a dozen order blanks.
Howard had given us precious little instruction. In fact, upon letting me out of the van at the entrance to Pinewood Hills subdivision, all he had said was, “I’ll meet you back here at five.”
There I stood.
Pinewood Hills looked to be an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The houses didn’t appear to be over five or six years old. They were mostly ranch, with covered garages sitting on half-acre lots. The lawns were neat. I noticed swing sets in a few of the backyards. My keen sales instincts said to me that meant there were children to go with them, and what better educational tool was there than a set of encyclopedias?
I opened my poster. There were fourteen volumes in each set of encyclopedias, according to the picture. A set cost $189.99. The deal was, you could pay 10 percent down and pay the rest upon delivery of the encyclopedias. If you paid up front, however, you would receive 10 percent off. Howard said we could take checks. “The piss-ants probably don’t have that much cash laying around the house,” he had explained.
I decided to work from right to left. I’d start at the first house on the right, then cross over to the first house on my left. A salesman needs a plan.
A plan. I hadn’t thought of that. I was a salesman without a sales pitch. You didn’t just walk up to a body’s front door and say, “Want to buy a set of encyclopedias?”
That certainly hadn’t worked for the guy who sold toothbrushes on the sidewalk. People would walk by, and he would ask, “Want to buy a toothbrush?”
He never sold a one. But then he got a plan. He made some cookies and put dog do-do in them. When people would walk by, he would say, “How about a free cookie?”
People would bite into the cookie and then spit it out. “This cookie,” they would exclaim, “tastes like dog do-do!” At which point the salesman would say, “That’s what it’s made out of. Want to buy a toothbrush?”
I decided to go with the old “I’m-working-my-way-through-college” routine. I would knock on a door, and when someone opened it, I would say:
“Hello. My name is Lewis Grizzard, and I am working my way through college. I’m selling encyclopedias, and I was wondering if perhaps you would be interested in buying a set.”
The person at the door would say, “Well, Timmy’s about to start school, and maybe a set of encyclopedias would really be a help to him. Won’t you come on in? Would you like some coffee before we start?”
I would say, “Yes, please, Cream only. What a nice house you have, Mrs. . . .”
“Carpenter. Mrs. Carpenter. How about a doughnut with your coffee?”
“That would be nice, Mrs. Carpenter,” I would say, and that would be all there was to it. Just that, I’d have my first sale on my way to earning as much as $125 per week.
Nobody came to the door at the first house. At the second, a small child answered.
I asked, “Is your mother home?”
The small child turned around and screamed, “Mommy! There’s a man at the door!”
And Mommy screamed back, “What does he want?”
The kid said to me, “What do you want?”
“I’m selling encyclopedias.”
The kid turned around and screamed again, “He’s selling plysopdias!”
And Mommy screamed back, “Tell him we don’t want any.”
“We don’t want any,” the kid said to me, and slammed the door in my face.
At the third house, a woman came to the door with curlers in her hair. She wore a bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy slippers.
Having been married to three women who were devoted to wearing curlers in their hair and fuzzy shoes on their feet, I have, over the years, put a great deal of thought into this uniquely female getup. My conclusions—remember that I am still concluding, which happens a lot when a man considers various behavioral patterns of women—is that they put curlers in their hair not to curl their hair but to pick up radio stations without having to turn on a radio.
My scientific knowledge is somewhat limited, but I know my ex-wives often had enough metal in their hair to pick up radio stations as far away as Del Rio, Texas. When they picked up rock stations, you actually could see their curlers moving to the raucous