Category Archives: My Life

Door-to-Door Sales at 12: A Slice of My Life

Moving to the Small Town

I finished 7th grade at Columbus Ohio’s Linden-McKinley Jr. High in June 1951, and my family (the Kasers) started packing for yet another move. We had bounced back and forth between various places since I was born–New Philadelphia, Ohio, Ames Iowa, Chicago and now Columbus. But always there were periods when we lived in Killbuck with my grandmother, Vera Anderson. But now my father had decided we needed to make a final move and buy our own home in Killbuck. And there flowered my door-to-door sales business.

Killbuck village sign erected in 2019. Photo from Facebook’s Killbuck Gang Group page.

My brother was ready to start second grade, and my baby sister had arrived in March 1949. Dad got it into his head that a small town would be a healthier place for us to grow up than in the city. I think he was looking back with nostalgia at a small town atmosphere that no longer existed, but for whatever reason he decided we should move.

I had always preferred the variety and excitement of bigger city life to what I felt was a restrictive atmosphere where everyone knew me and watched ever move. However, I would probably not have plunged into my first paying self-employed job in door-to-door sales if we had not moved back “home.”

The Itch To Work

At the ripe old age of twelve, I wanted to be independent. I needed more money than the measly allowance my dad gave me every week. More to do than read books all day all summer long–although I was pretty creative at how and where I could read. A job that was all mine. Not just a chore assigned by mom or dad.

Comic books were big at my age. Although I didn’t dote on Super Heroes, I read Classics Illustrated comic books and Mad Magazine. Cover to cover, including the ads in the back.

Body Building Ad
Body Building ad in comic book

In the back of some comic book, an ad caught my eye. Smaller than the big bully kicking sand in the face of the skinny kid who took a mail order body building course and showed up the bully and got the girl–just a tiny ad. Something like “Kids, start your own business.”

The ad outlined the door-to-door business of selling note cards, greeting cards and stationery, even name embossed. The company would send a book of samples and order forms. You would send in the orders and the money. They would send you the finished products to deliver to your customers.

I didn’t tell my parents. It looked like a really good deal to me–much better than all those “Be the first kid on your block to own” magic decoder rings and other plastic junk that I could order by mail from the back of comic books. But knowing parents as I did–they would find all kinds of things wrong with the idea and would talk to some merchant in town and get me some boring job that I wasn’t in charge of. No way. This was all my own idea and I’d do it all by myself.

I was going to be a female Horatio Alger character.

Door-to-Door Sales

So I sent off for the catalogue of stationery. I don’t remember if you had to send the company any money up front, but I actually don’t think you did. And when the catalogue came in the mail, my parents were flabbergasted. They hid their doubts well and were very supportive. They even gave me hints about where people lived who would likely buy and places where they wouldn’t. Of course had we still lived in the city, I doubt they would have been so supportive of me knocking on strangers’ doors. The people were mostly strangers to me who lived along Main and Water and Railroad Streets (the three 1-mile-long north/south streets in town) . But between Mom, Dad, Grandma and Aunt Sarah–there were no strangers.

The fact that everyone knew everybody probably made it more difficult for Mother to grin and bear this crazy undertaking of door-to-door sales by her young daughter. Mother had a sense of propriety and no doubt worried that people would think she was sending me out to slave away selling things because the family couldn’t afford to raise their family. Shades of David Copperfield! Definitely not good for the image she had of herself.

The Benefits

As it turned out, the company was legitimate. The goods arrived on time. The paper was cheap and the print not the best, but they weren’t the worst product I’ve ever seen, either. I was not overcharged or charged hidden fees. I actually made some money and opened my own savings account at the Killbuck Savings Bank. Although some people didn’t answer the door, or quickly closed the door, most were friendly and actually interested, in those pre-Amazon days, in ordering by mail. After all they were used to the Sears “Wish Book” and this was better because they could actually see and touch a sample AND they could get their name imprinted.

Some became regular customers. I counted up the money, purchased a money order, and sent it off. It wasn’t long until the big package arrived at the post office box we shared with grandma and I was delivering everyone’s cards and paper.

I learned so much. It included confidence in my ability to talk to anyone–even strangers. People taught me that they are generally interesting if you take an interest in them and have something they’d like to have. Since they had to pay in advance, they had to trust me. I, in return, had to show that I was dependable and knowledgeable about the product. Math was never my strong suit, but I did all the bookkeeping myself. It turned out to be very educational as well as rewarding.

I am not sure how long I stuck with door-to-door sales, or why I eventually quit. The business started in the summer time, and was still going when it was time for Christmas cards. I think I continued for more than a year, through two Christmases.

P.S.

And, as a side benefit, I learned to spell Badertscher, which came in handy when I had a blind date with the man who would become my husband. His aunt lived in my town and bought lots of name-imprinted stationery. Long before I met my husband-to-be, I had spent much time spelling out my best customer’s name: B-A-D-E-R-T-S-C-H-E-R.

We’ve always said that he married me because it was simpler than teaching someone to spell his name.

What was your first paying job? And what value did you get?

The Changing of the Moon: A Slice of My Life

I tried a few weeks ago to explain to some young women (not children– but young enough not to remember the landing of men on the moon) what an incredibly mind-blowing event that was.

Like all the BIG THINGS that we look back on as life-altering, the landing on the moon was the latest in incremental steps that we had been watching all along. So at the time, we don’t fully realize how it would affect us.

But this was different. One month we were looking at the full moon and saying to our kids–there’s the man on the moon. We were thinking of the moon as a mystical and romantic symbol of lunacy and love. The next month we were looking at the moon and trying to grasp the reality that a human being had left footsteps across the surface. No matter how matter-of- fact and scientific and logical a person you were–a part of you still felt the gauzy charm of a full moon. An atavistic urge to howl–or swoon until 1969.

After July 20, 1969 you would never feel entirely the same when looking at the moon. That was the day three American men reached the moon, and two were privileged to walk on it. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took steps on the moon, while Mike Conrad made sure they’d have a ride home by manning the spacecraft.

That July, we were in San Diego on a summer jaunt to the beach, and our scheduled return was on July 20. We watched astronauts on the motel television set. On the way home, we had the car radio tuned to listen to reports, and when we got home, hurriedly unpacked the car and settled in front of the TV to watch the actual landing which happened at about 8:00 p.m. Arizona Time. (This picture of our boys watching TV is actually from a couple years earlier, but not much had changed in the mid-century modern house in Scottsdale, Arizona.)

Boys watch TV October 1966

We listened to Walter Cronkite breathlessly report each movement of the astronauts, the ship and the command center. We recorded the coverage of the moon landing for hours, including the historic phone call from President Nixon to the astronauts, but the tape ran out just before Neil Armstrong stepped out of the capsule to put take the first small step on the moon. We photographed the boys watching the TV, and the TV show itself. Those photos or Super Eight films are stored away in a box with hundreds of other old photos.

Here’s President Nixon’s conversation, now readily available on the Internet, as are all the other moments we had captured..or not.

 

How this event changed deep feelings inside us is hard to explain. The other thing that is hard to understand from the perspective of the 21st century is how we adored the astronauts. We did not have to have anything to do with the space program to feel a deep sense of pride. Those guys (and later we learned–gals, too) were part of our tribe. And they were the best of us. They were heroes. We knew their names, followed their lives the way people hang on the details of the romance of Harry and Meghan or the new Royal babies that pose on the steps of a palace.

Since we come from Ohio, we were particularly proud. Now Ohio was the home of not only eight Presidents, but also the First Man to Orbit the Earth–John Glenn. AND NOW, ladies and gentlemen–Ohio was also the home of the First Man to Step on the Moon–Neil Armstrong. The reflected glory was almost too much to bear.

Our kids played with miniature astronauts and Mattel’s Major Matt Mason and his miniature space stations and miniature moon rovers and wore t-shirts with astronaut pictures and drang Tang for breakfast and coveted astronaut ice cream. Stores sold astronaut pens that would write in any position, in case we became weightless while writing. The astronauts wore seatbelts, so we religiously buckled ours.

But all these effects of man’s landing on the moon pales beside the visceral change inside of us each time we look at the moon. The moon had changed. And so had we.

 

Tacos Arrive in Mennonite Country: A Slice of My Life

Since it is Cinco de Mayo, I got to thinking about Mexican food. Today we take for granted that tacos and enchiladas and chimichangas and burritos show up in weekly menus as often as the German- and British-derived foods I grew up on. But there was that time in 1966 when I introduced an Ohio family to (American) Mexican food. There was that time when farmer Adam Bair, my husband’s uncle, could not get enough tacos.

Uncle Adam Bair with Kenneth Paul, Brent and Mike Badertscher about 1966.

The success of tacos at a family reunion of Badertschers and Kohlers and Bairs in rural Wayne County, Ohio, provides a perfect illustration of the way that American food preferences change.

In the late spring of 1966, my husband Ken and I traveled back to our home state of Ohio to visit the relatives we had left behind when we moved to Arizona. We had married in 1960 and moved to Arizona in 1963. Ken’s mother’s family gathered at their home which was surrounded by farms and just down the road from a center of Mennonite culture, Kidron Ohio. All the women would bring a dish to share. They would perhaps make a noodle casserole with the obligatory mushroom soup. Or perhaps they made a J-ello salad with cabbage and carrots. Surely some melt-in-your mouth desserts like raisin pie or dump cake would appear. There would be a platter of ham slices and Swiss cheese and home made rolls.

noodle casserole

Noodle Casserole, photo from Flickr used with Creative Commons license.

My mother-in-law told me that there would be plenty of food. Since I came from so far away, I would not be expected to provide a dish. But that did not seem right to me. For one thing, I loved to cook. For another, I wanted to be a part of the family.

When we moved to Arizona I quickly began to explore the new-to-me everyday cuisine of Sonora, Mexico. Sonora was just down the road. From Scottsdale where we lived, we would drive south through Tucson and on to Nogales, the border town. And Mexican restaurants were popular in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area. (We were later to move to Tucson, much closer to the border. As a town founded by the Spanish in 1776, Tucson was much more oriented culturally (and by cuisine) to Mexico.)

To put this in perspective, in the 1960s, ethnic foods and restaurants other than Italian and Americanized Chinese were just beginning to make inroads. Although there were plenty of Mexican restaurants in Arizona there were none in this county. No one at that family gathering had ever been to a Mexican restaurant. There were no Taco Bells in Ohio until 1970. There were no frozen Mexican dinners. There were no tortillas. And that explains why it was perhaps foolhardy of me to decide that I should make tacos for the family. [Note: My mother had been serving us “tamales” from a can in the 50s, but they bear little resemblance to real Mexican food.]

Tacos were simple to throw together, and a dish that I could make without recipes. All I needed was corn tortillas, some oil to cook them in, ground beef, tomatoes, onion, lettuce, and cheese for the filling. Salsa? Hot sauce? Not for these people who had never seen, let alone tasted tacos and enchiladas. [I may be wrong about that–my sister-in-law thinks that I did bring a bottle of salsa back from the store where I found the tortillas. Any cousins remember?]

Ken and I set out to get some tortillas. There were none in the grocery store in nearby Dalton. I don’t remember if we checked nearby Orrville, but they wouldn’t have had them either. So we went further afield–all the way to Mansfield, Ohio, nearly 50 miles away. We checked a couple of stores and they had no tortillas. Dejected, I tried one more store, perusing the freezer case–and there were frozen tortillas! Frankly, I don’t remember if I also found a can of Hatch green chiles to mix in with the meat, but I would have been cautious about using peppers, anyhow. Perhaps I diced a green bell pepper from my mother-in-law’s garden.

Back we went to my in-laws’ home, hoping the tortillas would thaw overnight. The next morning, I stirred the ground beef and diced onions in a hot skillet. I chopped tomatoes, and lettuce and grated cheese. (Plenty of cheese in Mennonite country, even if there was no queso blanco or Monterey Jack.) When the family members began to arrive, I fried tortillas in a inch of hot oil in a large skillet. I maneuvered them with tongs to form an envelope that could be stuffed with the ground beef. and vegetables.



Taco photo from Flickr with Creative Commons license.

Of course I had second thoughts once the familiar casserole dishes began to arrive. Would I alienate myself from these folks by bringing them alien food? Would they spurn the crispy taco shells spilling contents all over with every bite? Could I compete with J-ello salads?

As I watched anxiously, everyone cautiously took a taco from the warming pan I had put in a low oven. They said they liked them. But Uncle Adam, the German-Swiss farmer who defined the word “raw-boned” wrapped his big hand around one taco. And another and then another. I wound up back in the kitchen making more even more tacos. Ole’!

Of course by the mid 1980s, Mexican restaurants had spread to Ohio. One could find the ingredients to make them at home in every grocery store. But I am proud to say that in 1961. I introduced tacos to a bunch of people who lived in Wayne County, Ohio. They may even be celebrating Cinco de Mayo in Kidron, Ohio today.

HAPPY CINCO de MAYO!

[Note: I have made a couple of additions since receiving comments on this post. Keep the comments coming!]