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April
20, 2005 |
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A door-to-door clarinet salesman? When the late afternoon reverie is broken by the doorbell’s ding, one is usually faced with (a) the neighborhood kids selling something you don’t need but always purchase because the money goes to their school, (b) well dressed individuals selling religion, something likely needed but not wanted at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon or (c) if not the first two, you’re almost sure to greet an earnest young man whose truck, carrying a load of cutlery, supposedly broke down just outside of town on I-70 and rather than go to all the expense and trouble of transferring the knives from one truck to another, he’s here to “almost give them away”. He’s more easily turned away as his “incredible deal”, is neither wanted or needed. But Monday past who came “knock, knock, knocking on my front door?” None other than Aron Marsh. Who? That’s the question I asked myself. It turns out Mr. Marsh bills himself as “The Classy Clarinetist” and, when not playing his clarinet, occasionally you’ll see and hear him in downtown Grand Junction, goes door to door making folks aware of his services as a clarinet player for “dances, weddings, galas, parties, events of all kinds” according to his business card. While my life’s needs don’t currently require a clarinetist, should you have a desire for the sounds of a “licorice stick” check Aron out at his website www.marshproject.com. Over the years, I’ve toiled at many different jobs, two, milkman and pinsetter, are now obsolete. I’ve worked as a disc jockey (if disc jockeying can be termed work), shivered in the forty degrees below zero environment of a ice cream plant’s freezing room, and labored as a General Mills advertising geek attempting to interest Americans in overloading their cupboards with Betty Crocker Cake Mix. But no job was ever as tough as time spent knocking on doors in the small towns of central Iowa attempting to sell the “Encyclopedia Americana” “Earn $2,000 a week,” said the Des Moines Register ad. It read like the perfect summer job for a college student. Simple math dictated just five weeks of work would cover the cost of room, board, books and tuition for my junior year. That would allow the rest of the summer to be spent kicking back, drinking beer and chasing girls. Reality proved to be a different tale. One only earned two grand a week selling three sets of encyclopedias a night, six nights a week. What was actually pocketed, after a month’s work, was $125. I actually sold but one set of books, to a poor schnook in Newton, based on the premise encyclopedia’s would pave the way to college for the child his wife was going to deliver later in the year. To avoid the dreaded “call home and beg for money”, the rest of that summer found me running a jack hammer on a road construction crew, a job while not promising untold riches did, thanks to 12 hour days, provide money for college. But nothing in the decades to follow was ever as difficult as summoning the courage necessary to repeatedly knock on door after door of people who weren’t at all interested in having their evening disrupted by an earnest young encyclopedia salesman. If you ever wish to easily aggravate your fellow man, simply interrupt his watching “wrasslin” on the tube and attempt to beguile him with the wonders of buying 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Americana. And when he’s finished with his not so short, “get off my porch or I’ll sick the dog on you” diatribe the job description dictates you walk next door to the neighbors and try again. Door to door is a most difficult calling. Do me a favor. When the “Classy Clarinetist” knocks on your door, you be “classy” too. |
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