The Peddler - EV Melotte

HOT - today and last night golfing.

TODAY - will be hot but copious amounts of rain is coming with chances increasing all day and basically a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow as the front goes past.

Last night I was HOT as I had my best round of golf at Door Creek since August 15th 2012 as I hit a 44 and it all comes down to next week for the 2nd half championship.  The weird thing about golf and why its such a great sport is that no matter how good you do, there are always holes where you could have done better.

So I had my best round and all I'm thinking about are 4 holes with a bad chip shot or a bad drive or a missed putt.  You can never be totally happy golfing no matter how good you do.  Not like bowling where there is a ceiling.  I had a 299 many years ago and that is pretty much the best you can do, I was very happy. Golf?  I could have had a 36 and I still would not be happy . . . . . well . .. that is BS, I would be very happy.   Never mind.

Kewaunee Lighthouse

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The City Council - I was unable to attend a special joint meeting of Council and HLPC being up north but from Alderman Traxler.

**Water Tower Update**

The City Council accepted the recommendation of HLPC to accept the bid from Hermanson Concrete and Masonry to begin the removal of the remaining loose brick and to report back to the city the condition of the bricks and path forward with possible restoration.

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The Peddler - EV Melotte

During the Depression years a lot of men who had been accountants, bank tellers, and iron workers became door-to-door salesmen. I doubt that they earned a good living at it, but they earned something which probably helped their pride, and quite often they got free meals from their farm customers. They didn't get meals at our house. I don't remember them ever getting into the house at all. The business was all transacted outside, direct from the salesman's car.

I've never known if that was to keep them from knowing how poor we were or if my mother's very proper up bringing forbid her to be alone in the house with a man.

We bought all of our spices and extracts from the Watkins man. I believe we bought all of our medications from the Raleigh man. That's all medications. We never went to doctors. There was a cherry flavored syrup for coughs and a camphorated salve to put up our noses for head colds and rub on our chests for chest colds and wear under a flannel wrap around our necks for a sore throat and I clearly remember being made to swallow some of it once though I can't imagine what it was supposed to help. There was oil of cloves for toothache and iodine for practically everything. Cuts, scrapes, insect bites, warts, and a drop in a glass of water to prevent goiter.

We got our cod liver oil from the Raleigh man. We children each had to have a tablespoon of the stuff every single night of our lives until we were fourteen. The boys escaped it when they left home at that age. When I was fourteen my father left us, and he was the one who insisted on it. There was still half a bottle left, so I just took it to my room and kept on taking my dose every night until I emptied the bottle. I rather missed the bedtime habit when it was gone.

The peddler I liked best was the Tinker, but we weren't allowed to call him a tinker even though he called himself that. My mother said that "tinker" was an offensive term, on the order of "nigger" or "kike." so we called him "the man about the kettles." When his gaily colored truck, emblazoned with the slogan, "Here Comes The Tinker!" pulled up our drive I would run to the house calling, "Ma, here comes the man about the kettles!"

He did sell things, knives and scissors and canning lids and clothespins and glass knobs for coffee percolators and even kettles, but they were sidelines. Mostly he fixed things. He sharpened knives and adjusted scissors and put handles back on kettles and patched the tiny holes that wore through in the bottoms of our tin pots and pans. When he was through with the household mending he and Pa would go out to the barn or tool shed and he'd sharpen saws and mend harness and show Pa a better way to fit a new handle to the ax and all sorts of male-type things.  

Most things Pa could have fixed himself, maybe not as well,(and fitting a new handle on an ax is something that should be done very well indeed,) but Pa enjoyed talking with the tinker and my mother was always relieved to know that things were fixed right.

Pa was good at fixing farm stuff, but he didn't have the understanding or the patience for women's tools. Once he "fixed" a tiny hole in a saucepan by putting a short round-headed bolt and washer through the hole from the outside, with another washer and a nut on the inside. He figured it wouldn't matter if it sat on the stove a bit tilted. It never occurred to him how difficult it would be to get stuck-on food off that nut and quarter-inch end of the bolt. Once he adjusted the loose blades of my mother's best scissors with an eight pound sledgehammer, and got it so tight that it took him both bands and bulging muscles to open them. Ma wouldn't let him fix any more kitchenware, and he bought her a new pair of scissors from the tinker.

He was the only door-to-door salesman who ever came right into the house. He had to, to oil and adjust the sewing machine, tighten the loose back of a kitchen chair, notice when a lamp wick was getting short, so he could sell a new one. I liked the Tinker.

Over the years door-to-door salesmen just sort of faded away, to be replaced with "parties" for Tupperware, cookware, cosmetics and clothing. They have been mostly replaced by telemarketing, and now that you can buy anything from paper clips to a million dollar mansion over the Internet I suppose the telemarketers will soon stop calling I hope so.

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The four latest polls have Donald Trump in 4th place among African Americans.  FOURTH!!  Trump has 2% of the African American vote not only behind Clinton but also Johnson and someone named Stein who is running all of a sudden. Clinton has an 87% chance to win the election (if you believe in science).  Of course nothing is guaranteed. 

It seems people get a lot smarter with the REAL election as the media is all of a sudden asking actual questions and people have started to pay attention which is dooming Trump. Words matter it seems.  

Clinton has ALMOST caught up with media coverage.  Not quite.  But when I have noticed is the lack of TV ad's.  Clinton has $92 million in her war chest.  The last I read is that Trump has $800,000.  

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Gotta go work out and then a BUNCH of matting for the Paoli Art Fair Saturday! 

See ya