Andy Scores a Bag of Weed

Disclaimer:  as before.

So, there we were in frozen Grande Prairie, Alberta.  It's minus 45 and not a whole lot to do after a day freezing out butts off knocking on doors.  The stoner in our crew, Andy Bailey, had inexplicably neglected to bring any weed on the road this time, and he was really regretting it (and we could certainly have used the entertainment too).  "Let's go score some weed," he said.

"I thought you've never been here before," I replied.  Let me point out to you again what a relative innocent I was.  I had been a pretty straight-laced teenager until very recently, and the idea of trying to find a source of illegal recreational drugs in a strange city seemed about as realistic to me as panning for gold, only more dangerous.  Not to mention crazy.  OK, let's mention it.  "Andy, are you crazy?  Where are you gonna find weed in Grande Prairie?"

"I noticed a strip bar when we were driving into town.  Let's go there."

"To look at strippers?"

"No!  To score some weed, dumbass!  For sure someone there'll have some."

"Andy."  I tried my best to be the voice of reason.  The voice of maturity.  The voice of sanity.  "We can't just go to some strip bar in a town where we don't know anyone and walk up to some total stranger and ask to buy weed!"

"Sure we can.  Let's go."  Andy started pulling on his parka.  Seeing me hesitate, he said in exasperation, "Oh, come on!  Just come with me.  I'll do everything; you just be there.  You can sit and watch the show," he added with a smile.

I followed him out the door in a haze of horror and confusion about the spiralling chaos my until recently well ordered life was rapidly becoming.  We left behind at the motel room Mitch and the rest of the crew watching TV and laughing at my discomfort at having been drafted as Andy's wingman for the expedition.

We drove to the strip bar, parked, and went in.  Now, as a hormone-filled 21-year-old, this was not necessarily an undesirable (or, for that matter, unheard of) place for me to be, but given my shy and innocent nature, being there with a friend and coworker was a bit awkward.  Nevertheless, I played it cool.  Andy told me to sit down while he went to look for a likely mark to make his purchase.

So I sat down.  My heart was beating in my throat, both at the sight of the . . . um . . . naked . . . heh, heh . . . ladies on stage, as well as the knowledge of the illicit business that brought me there that night.  If only my parents could see me now, I thought.  From university to trolling for pot at a strip bar a thousand kilometres from home in no time at all!  This is quite a life I've scratched out for myself.

I had hardly had a chance to think these thoughts when Andy came back to the table and said, "Come on.  Let's go."

"Huh?"  I could be pretty articulate at times.

"We're good.  Let's go."

"What?  You got weed?"  The last word was barely whispered.  "Already?"

"Yes," Andy slipped into his slow 'I'm-talking-to-a-retard' cadence.  "Let's go back to the motel room and smoke it!"

"Oh.  Uh.  Okay."

Nossir, never a dull moment with Andy Bailey around.

Double or Nothing

I've liked backgammon since I was a kid, but never thought much of it until a book about backgammon theory found its way into my hands and opened my eyes to the depths of strategy and thought contained in that deceptively simple game.  One day on the road, I mentioned this to Andy Bailey, and he said, "Dude!  I love backgammon!  You should totally get a set next time we're in town and we'll totally play all the time on the next road trip!  Wanna make it interesting?  We can play for a quarter a game!"

I had never gambled on backgammon (or anything else as far as I can remember), but a quarter a game seemed pretty harmless, and I did want to test the book's theory about the strategic effects of the doubling cube on multi-game series, and a stake was the best way to do it, so I agreed.

The next time we were in Vancouver, I went to my favourite game geek store in Gastown and picked up, for 20 bucks, the set that I use to this day.  Not a cheap-o magnetic travel set, it's a genuine (well, synthetic) felt board and stone pieces, but light and compact.  Let the games begin.

Andy, Andy.  So excitable, so impulsive.  Poor guy couldn't say "no" to a double, or, after a lucky roll or two, keep his fingers off the doubling cube himself.  So you see (if you know anything about the game) that a measly 25 cents a game can easily turn into two dollars with the doubling cube on 8, were it usually ended up.   Sometimes it would get to 16, and finally on one very memorable occasion, all the way to 64, when a single game almost paid off my investment.  We played almost every night after work and every Sunday on the road from then on, and his tab just kept growing and growing.

Not that Andy was a bad player, mind you.  Just reckless.  I didn't mind taking his money, since he was obviously having such a good time.  In fact, of all the guys (and gal) I worked with back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, Andy Bailey was the most fun.  Fun was Andy's middle name.  Oh, the stories I could tell (and hopefully will).  His choice of songs for karaoke night at a redneck bar.  Scoring a bag of weed at . . . oh, I think I'll just leave you hanging for now.

All told, I made about $80 over the course of a month or so.  Not what one would call riches, but it certainly came in handy back then considering I wasn't exactly selling hundreds of encyclopedia sets.

Frozen Grande Prairie

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Grande Prairie, Alberta.  It was cold.

Grande Prairie, at around 40 thousand people, was one of the biggest cities we worked in my 6 months of purgatory.  We stayed there for a whole week in February of 1994, and I'll probably have a few tales to tell in future posts from just that week alone.

But mostly, it was cold.

Indeed, it's the coldest I've ever been.  One morning it got down to -47 Celsius (-53 Fahrenheit), but the first few nights we worked it was merely -45 (-49F) until it started warming up.  Folks, until you're outside knocking on strangers' doors in -45 degrees, you don't know what a tough day at work is.  I remember how different the physical world is at those temperatures.  When I would breathe in, the inside of my nose would instantly freeze, and when I exhaled, it would instantly thaw.  Ten times a minute.  And my coat sounded different.  In minus 45, it sounded like it was made from crinkly cellophane as I swung my arms while walking.

Unfortunately, I was less that ideally prepared for such weather.  I did have a really great warm parka with a hood, and decent gloves, so above the waist I was OK.  However, I didn't have long johns under my jeans and, worst of all, I had cheap non-winter hiking boots on my feet.  This was not good.

After about 15 minutes outside, I couldn't feel my toes any more.  After a few more minutes, I couldn't feel my heels either.  At that point, I would always say to the people behind the next door I knocked on, "Hi!  I'm an encyclopedia salesman.  I promise I won't try to sell you anything if you let me in to warm up."  And would you believe it, they always did!  I never once got turned down, and would usually be offered hot cocoa to boot.

But the best was one time, as I was just getting warm and toasty, the man of the house said to me, "Well, as long as you're here, why don't you try your pitch on us?"  I was always serious about not trying to sell to folks letting me in to warm up, but I wasn't going to insult this kind gentleman by refusing him.

It was one of the most satisfying sales I ever made.

What Have I Become? -- or -- Where's the Rest of Me?

I certainly never meant to be a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  I was looking through the job ads, and there was something about educational products, and I called for an interview.  I met with Richard, a 50-something gentleman, articulate and impeccably dressed.  He immigrated from Jamaica as a teenager, dirt broke, and had climbed to his current position of relative power all by himself.  I can only imagine how many encyclopedias he had sold, and he certainly sold me this job without my even realising it.  Of course, almost everything he told me was a flat out lie.  No travel ("Well, after training, we like the new trainees to go out with the crew leader for a week or ten days, to get away from distractions, you know"), no cold calling (lie!), and any number of other falsehoods and misdirections.

But by the time we had invested a week or more in training, gone on our first road trip (Three frigging weeks in Saskatchewan and Alberta!  How's that for a "week or ten days" for you?) and had our first tantalizing brushes with success, there were those of us who put the lies behind us and tried to make the best of it.  About three quarters quit within a couple weeks, but those who stayed, stayed.

After my second road trip, I found myself at home for a few days.  A longer break than usual, it gave me time to reflect a little.  I was starting to get a nagging little voice in the back of my head saying that something was not quite right.  That this wasn't exactly what I was supposed to be doing.  Too bad the voice didn't speak English.  Or maybe it just wasn't speaking loudly enough.

My old school buddy Chris was having a birthday party.  I hardly knew anyone there, and I found myself talking to I nice fellow who, understandably, asked me what I did for a living.  I, however, was at a loss for an answer. I hadn't really thought about it, and didn't have an answer prepared.  I paused to think about what had brought me to this moment.  Straight A's in high school, my pick of universities, a planned career as a veterinarian, then getting my lazy butt kicked out of university, the newspaper job ads, and now . . . what?

"I'm a  . . ."

What?  I put it together in my mind for the first time as I said it to Chris' friend at the birthday party.

"I'm a travelling . . .

. . . door-to-door . . .

. . . encyclopedia salesman."

Chris' friend looked at me kinda bemused, I guess wondering if I was having him on or not.  Apparently satisfied that I was serious, conversation moved on to other topics.  I wonder if he even noticed my pause, since it seemed to me like a lifetime's worth of thoughts went into it.  It might have been half a second; it might have been ten.  But my view of myself was forever altered.

The next day we had a big meeting for work in the head office.  Periodically we did this if a couple of crews found themselves in town at the same time.  It was an opportunity to schmooze, discuss concerns, share ideas for improving our pitches, etc.

Ladies and joims, I had a concern to share with the group.  It wasn't exactly Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but it was my life.  "This job isn't what we were promised.  I never expected to be on the road all the time, and it wasn't supposed to be cold calling and knocking on random doors all the time, and it wasn't supposed to be all about encyclopedias.  Yesterday, someone asked me what I did for a living, and you know what I had to tell him?  I told him I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman!"

The other newbies looked at me like I had just brought the Ten Commandments down from Sinai, and looked silently and accusingly at the bosses.  The bosses, especially Richard, looked at me, nodding sympathetically, as though they realised it had just been a matter of time before someone said it.

The next day, we were back on the road.

The Ferry Ride

I realised as I was writing the last story that just getting to Courtenay was half the excitement.  Well, not really, but it is a story.  You remember John Schlesinger, my boss, the cheapskate from a previous post.  Well, he came with us on the road this time too, so it was his Volkswagen Jetta we took.  As I believe I've mentioned before, the deal (if you can call it that) is that the driver pays all the transportation costs in exchange for a cut of the crew's commissions.  Everything else is on us; we split the cost of the motel, pay for our own food, etc.

As you may have figured out, since Courtenay is on Vancouver Island, simply driving there is not so simple.  In fact, it is a two hour ferry ride from Vancouver (actually the major metropolis of Tsawwassen) to Nanaimo on the Island.  So as we drove up to the ferry terminal, John, with an air of insouciant nonchalance 

(quick, keep writing before the smart pill runs out)

asked for everyone to chip in for the ferry ride.

Ladies and gentlemen, I lost it.

I've always been a pretty easygoing guy, tending to avoid conflict.  Go along to get along, you know.  But my frustration and exasperation with my company's BS had been simmering and stewing for months, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.  (Don't like my mixed metaphors?  If it's good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for me.)   This job was, to say the least, not what they had told us it was going to be -- remind me to tell you that story some time -- but I was stuck with it for the time being, and wanted to make it work.  But the resentment was growing, and it exploded when John asked for ferry money.

"No," I said.

"What do you mean no?  Pay up!"

"No!  I'm not paying for the f***ing ferry!  Transportation is supposed to be on you!"

"That's gas and maintenance for the car.  I'm not paying for you to take the ferry.  If you don't like it, you can take the bus home, and you'll be paying for that too."

"JOHN!  GET THIS THROUGH YOUR F***ING HEAD!  I'M NOT PAYING!  The transportation is on you!  That's the f***ing deal!  If you don't wanna pay for my f***ing ferry ride, then YOU WILL PAY FOR MY F***ING BUS RIDE HOME!"

I was in such a haze of fury, I can't even remember what the reaction of the other crew-mates was.  It might as well have just been John and me in the car.  John's reaction, however, was unexpected.  He laughed, and decided that he liked my resolve and initiative.  He paid for the ferry, and the incident passed.  I had earned John Schlesinger's respect.

Not that it was worth anything.

Reefer Madness

Disclaimer:  As I've mentioned before, not everything on this blog is exactly child-friendly.  Be warned.  Furthermore, I am in no way condoning and certainly not encouraging anybody to smoke pot.  That being said, I was a 21 year old university dropout at the time and . . . oh, what the heck, there are gonna be some pot stories on this blog, and here's the first one:

I'd venture a guess that if I were to ask a hundred people how much pot they think gets smoked on the road by travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen, as many would be shocked that it happens at all as would be shocked that it's not ubiquitous.  I'd say that of the dozen or so road trips I went on in my six months, there was weed on about half of them.  It mostly depended on the crew members of a given trip.  Some would be opposed, in which case nobody did any, some were cool with it, and then there were the potheads.

Like Andy Bailey.

Bet let's talk about Andy and his weed another time.  Today I'd like to tell you about Courtenay.  Courtenay isn't a person; it's a city on Vancouver Island where I went one time back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.

I'd been on the job for a couple of months, and had smoked up with some of my crew mates two or three times by that point, as well as a total of two times in my two years of University before that.  That is to say, I was by no means a stoner, so when Andy Bailey said we were entering one of the "weed capitals" of Canada, I wasn't sure what that could mean.  To me, back in those innocent days, the idea of people nonchalantly and fearlessly smoking up with strangers was something out of a Cheech and Chong movie, not reality.

So there I was, knocking on doors in Courtenay, and as happens (not nearly often enough to make my time in the sales cult lucrative)  I got into the home of a young couple whose baby was sleeping upstairs.  I found them to be the perfect

(suckers)

customers: they were receptive to my pitch, not too poor, not too rich.  And it's a fairly long and involved pitch at that -- at least an hour, as much as two, to get a $2100 commitment at the end.  By about the half hour mark, I was feeling quite good about it, just rolling along, so to speak, when all of a sudden the husband pulled out a bag of weed and started rolling a joint right in front of me without saying a word, continuing to pay attention to my pitch, as though he were just taking a sip of coffee.

I was well and truly flabbergasted.  Nothing in my life had prepared me for this moment.  I made the conscious decision to pretend I didn't notice what he was doing (which was about as realistic as not noticing him throwing pebbles at my face) and continued my pitch, while trying to project onto him some sort of mental force field: "Don't spark it up!  Don't spark it up!"

Of course, it's not that I didn't like weed myself, or that my moral sensibilities were being compromised in some way.  (I can hear you laughing.  "Moral sensibilities?  From a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman?"  Hardee har har.)  It's just that I was trying to make a living, that is to say trying to make a sale, and I couldn't imagine a couple of stoned customers deciding to make the commitment at the end.  So was I ever relieved when, after he had finished rolling the doobie, he set it down on the table beside him.

And there it stayed for about 5 minutes until, with the same nonchalance as when he rolled it, he picked it up and lit it.  He took a couple of puffs and passed it to his wife, who did the same.  All this time, my mind was racing (continuing to calmly pitch my "home educational library" all along) thinking to myself, "What are you gonna do if they pass it to you?  What are you gonna do if they pass it to you?"

Of course she passed it to me.  What kind of host would she be otherwise?

It was decision time.  They didn't cover this situation in training.

I took a big puff, and passed it back to the husband.  The

(elephant in the room)

joint made its rounds 2 or 3 times, never mentioned, almost invisible, as I continued pitching the product, and the couple kept nodding in all the right places.  But hoo-ee, was I ever stoned!  I felt I was floating somewhere near the ceiling as I pulled out poster after poster ("Now how much would you pay?  Wait!  Don't answer yet!  Just look what else you get!") working my way to the close.

Finally, I got to the end, which was almost anti-climactic.  When I asked for the sale, they agreed as though they had just been waiting for me to ask.  They signed on the dotted line, and I walked back to the motel room with a buzz, the happy expectation of a payday, and one hell of a story.

A Jew in St. Walburg

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, I went to St. Walburg, a town of about 650 people in northern Saskatchewan.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I'm Jewish, but 16 years ago, when I was selling encyclopedias, I wasn't that Jewish, if you know what I mean.  I might have gone to synagogue once or twice a year, did something or other Jewish on some of the major holidays, but not much more than that.  But I certainly felt Jewish, and one Jewish thing I did every single day was to wear a silver Star of David necklace, and had been doing so for years.

But I'm no idiot.  When out in the rural areas of BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan (not a lot of Jews out there), I kept the Star of David under my shirt.  Until, that is, I walked up to a door in St. Walburg and saw a mezuzah.

I must have stood there staring at it for a whole minute.  I hadn't seen the slightest hint of a Jewish presence in my 5 months (at that point) of encyclopedia sales in any town smaller than 200 thousand, much less 650 people.  My curiosity was almost palpable.  I had to know: what were Jews doing here?  And not just Jews, but Jews with a mezuzah, of all things, on their door!

Well, out came my Star of David, and I knocked on the door.  A kindly elderly gentleman came to the door.  I felt a small tinge of disappointment, since I wasn't going to make a sale that day.  (Our encyclopedia package was geared towards families with small kids.  More about that in a future post.)  But nevertheless, I had to satify my Jewish curiosity about these people.

So I got myself invited in, and the man's equally elderly wife made me some cocoa, and we all sat down to chat.  I didn't really know how to bring up my main question, so we just shot the breeze for a few minutes.  I was, however, getting the firm impression that they didn't exactly seem Jewish to me.  Finally, after all my pathetic attempts at steering the conversation towards Judaism failed, I just came out and said, "Pardon me for asking, but are you folks Jewish by any chance?"

"No," they said.  "Why do you ask?"

Why do I ask?  Why do they think??  "Well, you know that thing you have nailed to your doorpost?  With the Hebrew writing on it?  It's called a mezuzah, and it's usually just Jewish homes that have them."

"Oh, that!"  Yes, that.  "Well, our daughter was visiting the 'holy land' a few years ago, and someone sold it to her.  They said it was a good luck charm, and that we should put in on our doorpost."

Well, that's when I realised that the Jew in St. Walburg was just me after all.

The Mitch Clinton Primer

Allow me to introduce you to Mitch Clinton.

Mitch was my crew leader for most of my six months as a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  When not selling, Mitch was one of the crudest, rudest, most foul-mouthed and dirty-minded people I've ever known.  Now, I mean that in the nicest possible way.  He was actually a pretty decent guy: lots of fun, occasionally quite funny, a pretty good friend, honest and reliable about money matters, and occasionally endearingly protective of his crew.  It's just that he was a pig.

For example, when the five of us would share a motel room with a single bathroom, Mitch was not into taking turns.  If several people needed to urinate at the same time, as far as Mitch was concerned, they could simply gather around the toilet and do their business.  Now, I suppose if we were from a country with mandatory military service, this might have been less shocking, but to me this was so uncivilised as to be not only inconceivable, but actually physically impossible, a fact that Mitch found quite amusing.

Of course, it's impossible to live with such people for six months without some of these character traits rubbing off.  In fact, remind me to talk about my reintegration into society afterwards some day.  In some ways, it's like getting out of prison.  And when I say "live with," please understand that we would only be home about two weekends a month.  The rest of the time, we were on the road together.

There was a girl who by the time I started working there had mostly quit, but who had been Mitch's crew leader once upon a time, and who would still occasionally come by the office to check in or to help with training new crews, and would do some door knocking in Vancouver in her spare time.  One day on the road Mitch decided to share with his crew -- in embarrassingly sordid detail -- the affair that he and she had had on the road once.  Folks, suffice it to say that the details are not for the faint hearted, and shall not be shared here.  What a pig.

One time, Andy Bailey and I were lying on the bed and teasing Mitch about something or other while he was walking by.  We must have gotten him good, because he ran out of insults and replies, leaving him with only one weapon to get us back with: the red eye.  He had told us about it once before, but I never imagined I'd be on the receiving end of one.

The "red eye" is basically a variation of "mooning" someone, except after the trousers are dropped, the . . . uh . . . cheeks are spread, revealing . . . uh . . . far too much.

It happened so quickly.

Andy and I had no chance to close our eyes or turn away.  The image of the

(red eye)

bum was seared into our memories forever.  Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still see it.  Andy and I both covered our eyes and screamed, "Ahhhhhhh!  It burns!  It's not going away!"

What a pig.

If Mitch took anything seriously, it was sales.  Not just how many encyclopedias he and his crew were selling, but sales as a concept, as a way of life, as a religion.  He would get us to talk about selling in our spare time.  Strategies, tactics, keywords, attitudes, and more.  This was life.

Welcome to the world of Mitch Clinton.

Plamondon

Sometimes, just a few words are all it takes to completely alter one's perception of something . . .

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Plamondon, Alberta.

Just a little village of a couple hundred people, there was nowhere near enough "territory" for a crew of five salespersons to work.  No problem; this was a common situation for us.  One person would work Plamondon itself, and the rest would drive out each day, dropping one person off in each neighbouring town.  We would all meet up again every evening at the motel in Plamondon, shoot some pool and drink some beer at the motel bar, go to sleep, and do it all over again the next day.  We did this for three days, and I was the one who got Plamondon.

On the first day, I knocked on about three quarters of the doors in town, but didn't make a sale.  At the bar that evening, I saw all the same people whose doors I had knocked on, and drank and played pool with a few of them.  Fred was particularly friendly, and was a good sport about wiping the floor with me at the pool table.  (We weren't playing for money.  I never gambled on the road except for backgammon with crew mate Andy Bailey and, on one memorable occasion, poker.  But those are stories for another time.)

On the second day, I finished knocking on all the doors in town in the first hour or so, and still no sale.  Faced with the prospect of sitting in the motel room for the rest of the day and not making any money, I decided to be a real go-getter and started walking down the highway to the farm houses instead.

The farm houses were spaced about a 20 minute walk apart.  At the first one, nobody was home except for a scary dog.  At the second house, the owner, Tim, was standing on the front porch, talking to some man dressed in colorful old-style European clothes and speaking with an accent.  He looked like a Russian folk dancer.  It turns out he was an Old Believer, part of a Russian Christian sect that's been living in exile in North America for generations, and who have a large isolated community just outside Plamondon.  More on the Old Believers in another post. (That's where I spend my third day.)

The two gentlemen having concluded their business, the Russian fellow left, and Tim invited me inside.  Well, one thing led to another and wouldn't you know it -- I made the sale.  By this time I'd been selling for six months, so when it came time to fill out the order form at the end, I just went on autopilot.

"Ok Tim.  What's your last name?"

"Plamondon."

My autopilot broke.  I felt confused and at a loss for words.  "Uh . . . no.  What's your last name, Tim?  I know what town we're in."

"My last name is Plamondon," he said slowly, as though speaking to a dim-witted child.

I struggled to find something interesting to say.  Something witty.  Something by which to impress Tim with my sagacity.  "So . . . did you get teased a lot as a kid?"  Nope, that wasn't it.

Well, Tim responded with a line that I will remember to my dying day.  Six words that caused me to instantly and completely reevaluate the last two days.

"No, we're mostly Plamondons around here."



Post script:  That night at the bar, I was playing pool with Fred again.  He said to me, "I hear you sold my cousin some encyclopedias today."  Yup, I was ready to go home.

Burnout

I was going to share the story of my visit to Plamondon, Alberta, but I realised that what got me there would make an worthwhile introduction.  It was the spring of 1994, and I was well and truly burned out from selling encyclopedias.

You see, I had been living in Ontario and had attended a major University there from 1990 until 1992, when I got kicked out (grades).  One thing led to another, and I found myself unemployed and directionless in Vancouver, which led to my stint as a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  After a few ups and downs (more downs) over the months that followed, I had an epiphany during what would turn out to me my second-to-last road trip that I was ready to go back to University and not mess it up this time.

I liked being in Vancouver, so when we got home, I applied to UBC, and then set out for the road again with a lighter heart.  I felt like I was back on track for the first time in years.

My good mood lasted about 2 weeks, until I called home from the middle of nowhere in Alberta, and my Mom gave me the bad news that UBC had sent me a rejection letter, saying that it was against their policy to accept any students who were on academic probation at another University.

I was crushed.  My perfectly reasonable and practical plan to get my life in order had been derailed, and I was rootless again.  (Pardon the mixed metaphor.)  I wasn't sure yet what exactly I needed to fix my life, but one thing was certain: when this road trip was over, I was finished with being a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.  When I met up with the rest of my crew that evening, they were all very sympathetic and supportive and took me out for a few drinks.

Before we could get home, however, and let me move on to the next stage of my life (which turned out to be moving back to Ontario and returning to my old University, graduating with Honours in 1997), there was one more stop to make on our road trip.  The next day, we rolled into Plamondon, Alberta.

The Extension Cord

Gotta start somewhere, so here's a story for y'all.

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

We.

You see, we travelled in teams.  That is, crews.  Typically five people, one of whom would be the "crew leader".  The crew leader was the owner of (almost invariably) a Volkswagen Jetta and was responsible for all transportation costs, in exchange for a cut of his crew's commissions.  For most of my road trips in my six months in purgatory, it was Mitch Clinton.  More about him in future posts.  Sometimes, the boss would also come.  John Schlesinger.

Ah, John.  What an a**hole.  Cheap, petty, and mean, but usually a lot of fun, and almost always good company, as long as you were getting the job done.  It's John I want to talk about today.

Now, people who've never been anywhere really cold might not know what a block heater is, but if you ever want to get your car started in -30 degrees, like it was in Saskatoon at the time, it's a must.  So all the cars have a little power cord hanging out the hood, and all the houses have an outdoor outlet, and when you park for the night, you just plug it in using a short extension cord.  Simple.

Okay, so John forgot to bring an extension cord.  "No problem," we said when we unloaded our stuff in the motel room.  "Just pop over to the hardware store and get one."

"F*** that!" answered John.  "It's five dollars!"  (Did I mention John was a millionaire?)  "I've already got like 20 in my garage back home from every f***ing winter road trip when I forget to bring one.  I am not getting another f***ing extension cord!"

We all waited patiently for John to finish venting.  "John, it's five bucks.  And anyways, it's minus 30 outside; we're not going anywhere in the morning if the car doesn't get plugged in."

"F*** that," said John, again.

Never underestimate a cheapskate.  John got back into the car and drove it up onto the sidewalk until its nose was literally kissing the outlet outside our motel room door.  When he got out of the car and succeeded in plugging it in, we all had to laugh.  It was one of the most comically ridiculous things I'd ever seen: a veritable tribute to one man's cheapness.

The motel's night manager didn't exactly see it that way, though.  He was in his 60's, spoke slowly with a drawl, and to us West Coast city folk seemed like the very epitome of an uneducated small-town hick.  I feel embarrassed about that attitude now, but boy did I ever feel superior then.

Well, this manager stormed out of his office with eyes blazing and smoke coming out of his ears.

"What is this bool-sheeyit?  You can't park your car there!  You never heard of an extension cord?  I don't need this bool-sheeyit!  You're blocking the whole sidewalk!  What kind of bool-sheeyit is this?  You gotta move that car right away!"

And then, he delivered his coup de grace:

"This is BOOL-SHEEYIT!!!"

The rest of the crew and I tried our hardest to stifle our laughter, but John . . . well, John just stood there listening to the guy with a big grin on his face.  He was proud.  Was it the elegantly engineered solution to a challenging problem?  The chutzpah?  The originality?

Nah, it was the five bucks.

The First Post

"Back in the days when I was a travelling door-to-door encyclopedia salesman..."

That's how hundreds of stories told to my friends in the last sixteen years have begun.  Who woulda thunk that a crappy high-stress job taken out of desperation at a directionless time in my life would have supplied me with a lifetime of memories?  Well, my friends (and wife) certainly seem to appreciate my reminiscing about those days, and since everybody and his dog seems to have a blog these days, I figured, "Why not me?"