Pocket money wasn’t a big staple in Prep school.  There wasn’t much to buy – newspapers or ice cream.  College presented a different set of options.  Beer cost more than Coca-Cola, and then there were girls.  My parents sacrificed a great deal to educate me, and my younger brother Ken.  Both of us knew it. We took any opportunity that came our way to make extra money.

Junior year, my lacrosse teammate Jim Ostheimer had signed a contract to sell a line of cutlery and household knick-knack items for Hoffritz, a leading retailer in the field. He hired me to help him.

Rejection and how you deal with it is a large part of any undertaking.  Our first efforts at selling to roommates, teammates and friends proved profitless. Most of them had no money either.

We decided to expand our territory and chose three destinations out of town to ply our wares.  South Hadley, North Hampton, and New London were the locations of choice.  It was no coincidence that they were home to Mt. Holyoke, Smith and Connecticut College.

Between classes, homework and lacrosse practice there was little time left for capitalistic pursuits.  Our selling trips had to be well coordinated.  Evenings were the times of preference.  Research was also a part of our sales strategy.

An enterprising upper-classman and fellow DKE Fraternity Brother had appropriated the posture pictures of Smith’s class of ’57 (nude photographs- frontal and side view – used to determine possible spinal curvature, for corrective purposes).  How he had procured them didn’t matter, and we didn’t ask.  It was enough that he let us look at them.  We spent several hours at the DKE bar pouring over the collection, and occasionally taking notes.

Two days later we loaded Osty’s car with a full compliment of top of the line knives, can openers, leather manicure sets, picture frames combs and other accessories.  Not surprisingly, we chose Smith for our first out of town venture.  We headed north, directly from the field house, after practice, eager to match pictures to faces.  Mixing business with pleasure is an acceptable pursuit!

We went from dorm lobby to dorm lobby, packing and unpacking the car, discouraged with sporadic sales and a complete inability to recognize individual girls from their posture pictures.  (They did look different with clothes on).  Nothing clicked.

We packed it in after canvassing four buildings, decided to rethink our approach and stopped at a bar in North Hampton to de-brief.  The Marciano-Lewis fight was on the black and white TV.  The bar was crowded with locals.  Time sped by.  The fight was a classic.  Between the boxing match and our futile attempts to charm some of the talent in attendance, we squandered most of the cash in our pockets.

By the time we had to head back to New Haven, our spirits had improved.  Jim turned on the ignition.

“My God, there’s no gas in this thing.”

Between us we had less than $3.  I remembered another bar near South Hadley a short distance away.  We took off with our fingers crossed.  A few minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of “The Wishing Well.”  The bar was closed.  The well outside was not. We stripped to our skivvies and waded in, breaking the ice as we bent down or dove to retrieve pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  Our total take was $14 plus.  There was an all night gas station/convenience store located on the way to the highway, a short distance down the road.  We’d stop, fuel up and be on our merry way.

All of a sudden headlights appeared at the far end of the parking lot.  Thank the Lord that the young trooper had a sense of humor.  What a sight!  There we were, bare foot, bare chested, teeth chattering, trying to put our pants on, and turning blue.  We hardly posed a threat to society.  He could hardly suppress his laughter.  We received the obligatory tongue-lashing and the dire warning should we ever repeat the pilfering.

“You guys take it easy on the way home. Don’t catch pneumonia!’’

We finally made it back to New Haven vowing to plan our next sales outing in greater detail, and escrow a reserve for gas.   Quite an entry into the sales world!

George S. K. Rider