My First Job
When I got old enough to join the Boy Scouts of America my mother decided that I needed to earn the money it would take to purchase my uniform and accouterments that were germane to the kit. Scout stuff has always been relatively expensive and you just had to have the scarf and the scout knife and the campaign cap and camping gear and on and on and on.
Anna Dalton Butler decided that I needed to memorize a sales pitch. Mine went something like:
“Good afternoon Mr. or Mrs. So & so, My name is Lewis Butler. I am trying to earn enough money to purchase my uniform for the Boy Scouts of America. I would like to show you these greeting cards to see if you might be interested in any of them.”
That was all I needed to say and do: these folks were anxious to reward me in my quest. The greeting card business started fast and stayed that way.
I figured that I needed about $60 or $70 to get all the stuff I needed to be a well outfitted Boy Scout. But sales were so brisk and my mom kept ordering cases of cards for me to sell. When I broke through the $100 level I began to wonder where all this traveling sales business was going!
I was beginning to notice some other things out on the sales circuit. There were a lot of grown men at home in the middle of the afternoon. I wondered why they were not at work. I would invariably encounter a combination of odors emanating from the domiciles of these particular customers. Some were the unmistakable smells of cooking but something else was in the air.
I also noted that the eyes of these men were more often bloodshot and the odor of their breath sickly-sweet. It occurred to me later on that these guys were getting an early start to the ‘cocktail hour.’ This deduction was never verified, but it still seems to make sense.
After our third case of cards arrived I and my dad got mom to stop ordering them. He was taking off from work at the barber shop to drive me around the neighborhoods. And there was a fellow in our church, Martin Myers who had a little greeting card business, and I was making a dent in his income.
When I ended my card selling business we had about a case and a half of greeting cards left. We had cards to send for all occasions for years to come. We may have moved off and left a half a case in the attic in the Butler house: I don’t know.
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