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.