CHAPTER 8 Everything Money Can Buy

West Texas in 1961 was a wonderful place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there if you are a salesman. Big Springs, Midland, Oddessa and the outlying towns were openly hostile to anyone dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase. They had a simple ordinance regarding purchase of door-to-door sales licenses. They bust you on sight. If you are slick, you carry a few copies of The Watchtower and claim to be a Jehova's Witness on a mission from God. If the cops search your briefcase and find insurance contracts, encyclopedias, a vacuum cleaner or aluminum siding, you are a monkey in a cage. You remain in that cage until you come up with enough cash to lecture on Famous American Presidents.

I spent a number of hours in a number of such cages in west Texas during my summer as a salesman. One of those jails was quite literally a cage. It was a ten foot cube of welded iron pipe held closed by a chain and padlock. I was in a slump and hadn't sold a single set of encyclopedias in three weeks. I was on "the draw" and the draw funds were running shallow. The color of my confidence was a very pale shade of gray and I began to seriously doubt my ability to make enough spending money to survive more than a week of college.

Encyclopedias are (or were in those days), an essential decorative accent to the Average American Home. They are an essential accessory to any address that subscribes to Better Homes And Gardens. There just aren't any better ways to insure that 2.3 children will assimilate enough knowledge to pass sixth-grade history. Any parent knows you can simply take a few pages of the encyclopedia and mix it into the potato salad with the new food processor. One way or another you get it into your kids. If not, at least the whole set just sits there making you look intelligent. The paradox of such a possession is in the choice between use and display. Encyclopedias showing signs of wear are simply unacceptable. They cost too damn much to have some kid with grubby hands smear peanut butter on the cover and wear out the bindings on a parquet floor. To properly care for encyclopedias, you must buy them when the children are less than six years old and forbid them to touch the books for ten years or, until they are old enough to begin serious studies of The Anatomy. It is at this point that you can discard Grandpa's National Geographic series on The Boobs of Bora-Bora. People who buy encyclopedias look upon encyclopedia salesmen as wondrous Miracles of Life and Human Culture. People who don't buy encyclopedias look upon encyclopedia salesmen as sub-human social failures. Encyclopedia salesmen look upon themselves as enterprising goal-oriented survivalists and horny, sub-human social failures. All these evaluations are correct. Our raids on these west Texas towns had been very successful for all but three of our crew. I and two other salesmen had batted zero, with myself and one other having occupied a jail cell in separate towns. He had elected to give up and borrow bus fare home. The rest of our twenty-odd swashbucklers had rented several large rooms at a motel.

It was late in the evening when my crew chief bailed me out of the local tank. As we drove to the motel, he tipped me off that something was up. I figured I was about to be given bus fare home. I hadn't made a sale in almost a month.
When we arrived at the motel I was ushered up to one of the larger suites. Inside was four beds placed side by side with about six naked men and one girl. She was young, naked, lovely, extraordinarily well built and of course, a prostitute. It was obvious that some of the guys had made a lot of money and were showing off. I felt sick. I had been without a lover for over a year but this had nothing to do with love. It was like wearing someone else's dirty underwear. The loudest, most obnoxious and successful of our crew chiefs was pimping. He offered me the girl for $125.00. Her fee was $100.00. I refused, citing the fact that I was totally broke. I made no mention of feeling like I was in a dog pack, gang-banging a bitch in heat. Mr. Obnoxious loudly offered to loan me the money as the girl rubbed her body against my side, stroking me through my pants. I felt sicker. I snapped a "No thanks" and left the room.

The next day I made a sale. I'm not sure it was because of my disgust with the motel scene, or my resolve to remain temporarily celibate and to not make a career of encyclopedia sales. I honestly didn't give a damn if I made a sale or not. It had an unexpected effect on my memorized sales pitch. I made two more sales the next day and averaged three sales a week from that point on. I began to be noticed at the bank, back in Ft. Worth. One of the tellers was Elaine Jackson whom I had known since grade school. My deposits had caught her attention. She had the biggest, most beautiful eyes imaginable and had grown into a delicious looking woman. For the first time ever, I found the courage to ask her for a date. For the first time ever, she was engaged.

What the hell I thought, I was about to start college. There would be dozens and dozens of available girls. Sure. Dozens.