Raise your glass, and propose a toast, to extinct....

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barnacler

barnacler

Well-known member
May 13, 2013
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Jobs!

Today, I toast the .....

ENCYCLOPEDIA SALESMAN!

Yes, once, in days of old, these brazen shysters ravaged suburbia, shaming parents into splurging on these ridiculously long sets of books that adorned bookshelves. I personally perused them as a young lad for all things pertaining to sex. In fact, it was there that I stumbled on the information that, well, got me to WHERE...... I am today!

Second only to the Eatons and Sears catalogues, in particlar the girdles section.

Anyhow, anything else you can remember welcomed.

Please do not get political, it merely points out to everyone that you are indescribably dull, and guaranteed to ruin an otherwise good time.
 
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Endurance2024

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Oct 23, 2024
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barnacler said:
Jobs!

Today, I toast the .....

ENCYCLOPEDIA SALESMAN!

Yes, once, in days of old, these brazen shysters ravaged suburbia, shaming parents into splurging on these ridiculously long sets of books that adorned bookshelves. I personally perused them as a young lad for all things pertaining to sex. In fact, it was there that I stumbled on the information that, well, got me to WHERE...... I am today!

Second only to the Eatons and Sears catalogues, in particlar the girdles section.

Anyhow, anything else you can remember welcomed.

Please do not get political, it merely points out to everyone that you are indescribably dull, and guaranteed to ruin an otherwise good time.
Click to expand...
National Geographic for those insitefull articles on an obscur tribe somewhere in Africa.

And these puppies. Use to use them a lot before cell phones.
No snow removal contract for this one but they might still be repairing them as out of curiousity when I stopped again for coffee in the spring I checked and it stll had a dial tone. No interact tap just coins which was odd to.
PhoneBooth.jpg
 
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xmontrealer

(he/him/it)
May 23, 2005
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For my 18 year old summer job I was a Fuller Brush Man for 3 months.

Basically selling small household items door to door.

Only one guy in my area got laid on the job, one time only, and he said she was so ugly he would have been better off just working...
 
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xmontrealer

(he/him/it)
May 23, 2005
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Ice man - a very vague memory from my early childhood years.

Bread man - lasted more years than the Ice man. My favourite was the powdered sugar covered dense small donuts 🥰
 
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xix

Time Zone Traveller
Jul 27, 2002
5,207
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La la land
Newspaper boy/girl. There are some but old people on their cars.

Neighbour Teenager Lawn cutting / snow removal service .

Shoeshine? - maybe at airports only.
 
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Mr Deeds

Muff Diver Extraordinaire
Mar 10, 2013
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Here
My father was a traveling salesman we had the same milkman for years he was blonde haired and blue eyed my family is dark haired Italian on both sides my sister came out blonde blue eyed. I bet my old man is sitting in hell right now still wondering
 
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Ponderling

Lotsa things to think about
Jul 19, 2021
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Mississauga
I grew up in Orillia, a busy little blue collar manufacturing hub up until about 1980.
Once full of employed machinists, foundry men, welders, mold makers, crane operators, wood machinists. Kiln operators. Shippers/receivers, truckers.
Gobs of once busy factories are now all gone and the properties knocked flat.
Even the Steelworkers union hall has been demolished, after having its title being handed to the town for back taxes.
 
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thumper18474

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Mar 1, 2012
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Treading water as I float down the river of time.
Thru the 80's..we had an ice cream man come to our house with all sorts of goodies...from freezies to fudge cicles nutty buddies..creamcicles to tubs of all sorts of ice cream!!
It was awesome!
 
R

Robert Mugabe

Well-known member
Nov 5, 2017
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barnacler said:
Jobs!

Today, I toast the .....

ENCYCLOPEDIA SALESMAN!

Yes, once, in days of old, these brazen shysters ravaged suburbia, shaming parents into splurging on these ridiculously long sets of books that adorned bookshelves. I personally perused them as a young lad for all things pertaining to sex. In fact, it was there that I stumbled on the information that, well, got me to WHERE...... I am today!

Second only to the Eatons and Sears catalogues, in particlar the girdles section.

Anyhow, anything else you can remember welcomed.

Please do not get political, it merely points out to everyone that you are indescribably dull, and guaranteed to ruin an otherwise good time.
Click to expand...
My first summer returning to Canada after years of absence in the UK. (The summer of 1969.) Thank you, Bryan Adams, I sold encyclopedias for Colliers. Based in Calgary. Me and a carload of young university kids travelled all over Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC going from town to sell our books. From Fort Saint John to Regina. Nice bunch of guys. Nice people. Didn't win any awards for best salesman or anything but fond memories of a summer where I saw more of Western Canada than I could ever have expected seeing in that short a space of time. Got arrested in Lethbridge for not having a salesman's license. Duty sergeant at the police station saw my tweed jacket and semi long hair and yelled at me "Are you or have you ever been a member of the hippie movement? I didn't tell him I was a card-carrying member. He didn't seem to have a sense of humor.
 
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mandrill

mandrill

monkey
Aug 23, 2001
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When I was a little kid in the Old Country, the rag-and-bone-man. He had a horse and cart and would drive about the town ringing a bell and collecting - yes - rags and bones to sell to some recycling business.

My great grandad was a ponyman. He looked after the "pit ponies" - the little horses who pulled the carts underground before the coal mines were mechanized.

His son, my grandad was a chimney sweep. Just like Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins". He had hands as hard and black as bears' paws with decades of wielding the brushes and the dirt and soot.
 
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mandrill

mandrill

monkey
Aug 23, 2001
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Mr Deeds said:
My father was a traveling salesman we had the same milkman for years he was blonde haired and blue eyed my family is dark haired Italian on both sides my sister came out blonde blue eyed. I bet my old man is sitting in hell right now still wondering
Click to expand...
My mom told me that the milkman used to spend a half hour or so "delivering" something to our next door lady neighbour back when we first came to Canada. Must have got lonely in those new subdivisions.....
 
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barnacler

barnacler

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May 13, 2013
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As I (vaguely now) recall, when their were gas station attendants everywhere - no self-service yet - I remember they would check your oil and tires and sometimes clean your windshield while the gas was filling up.
 
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tml

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Aug 10, 2011
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barnacler said:
As I (vaguely now) recall, when their were gas station attendants everywhere - no self-service yet - I remember they would check your oil and tires and sometimes clean your windshield while the gas was filling up.
Click to expand...
My Sister still insists on going to a full service station. They are independent stations, not the big companies.
 
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barnacler

barnacler

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tml said:
My Sister still insists on going to a full service station. They are independent stations, not the big companies.
Click to expand...
If its super duper cold and I'm not particularly warmly dressed AND dont feel like freezing both my balls AND my fingers off I will go to a full service station, but I always tip them a toonie.
 
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Robert Mugabe

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Nov 5, 2017
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mandrill said:
When I was a little kid in the Old Country, the rag-and-bone-man. He had a horse and cart and would drive about the town ringing a bell and collecting - yes - rags and bones to sell to some recycling business.

My great grandad was a ponyman. He looked after the "pit ponies" - the little horses who pulled the carts underground before the coal mines were mechanized.

His son, my grandad was a chimney sweep. Just like Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins". He had hands as hard and black as bears' paws with decades of wielding the brushes and the dirt and soot.
Click to expand...
 
W

wonderingeye

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Nov 1, 2015
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Back in the day, there was the pop truck, driving down side streets, selling mostly ethnic flavored drinks. Gasossa, Brio, etc.

Btw, I was in the burbs outside of Chicago in 2010s and saw a milk truck delivery glass bottles door-to-door. Patrons would leave their empties in a large cooler by the side of the house.
 
barnacler

barnacler

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May 13, 2013
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mandrill said:
My great grandad was a ponyman. He looked after the "pit ponies" - the little horses who pulled the carts underground before the coal mines were mechanized.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the book Germinal by Emile Zola:


Here are the key details regarding the coal mine horses in Zola's Germinal:
  • The "Never Again" Fate: Horses were lowered into the mine shaft while young and small, grew up in the subterranean darkness, worked until they died, and were buried in the pit. They never returned to the surface.
  • Symbolism of the White Horse, Bataille: Zola highlights the story of a white horse named Bataille, who has lived in the dark pit for 10 years.
  • Reactions to Newcomers: When a new horse, Trompette, is brought down, Bataille smells the fresh air and sunlight on him, evoking a "resounding whinny" that is both a greeting and a sad sigh for the newcomer, knowing Trompette will never see the sun again.
  • Life in the Pit: The horses serve as a "metabolic" force of labor, working to extract coal in the deep, dark, and often wet tunnels.
  • The Contrast with Human Workers: The horses represent the absolute, inescapable exploitation of labour, mirroring the harsh lives of the miners, who are also, in a way, trapped in the darkness of the mine.
The imagery of these horses, which Zola researched by visiting actual coal mines, serves as a poignant, forgotten element of the industrial revolution, highlighting a life of, quite literally, "never seeing light again".

A Classic of French literature.
 
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