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Death of a Salesman

    Then there was "Uco-Menthol Salve".  This hit a nerve the first time George related his development of the product.  For I had personal knowledge of "Uco-Mentho Salve".   While yet in late childhood, maybe seven or such, I fell victim to a "Uco-Mentho Salve" ad in some boys' journal of that bygone era.  Here was another audience cultivated by George Rhine and his cohorts in those days: the "kid market" - defined then  more as Boy Scouts and newspaper boys  rather than wearers of tight jeans and consumers of franchised hamburgers.  To your true huckster,  then as now,  however, no one's pennies are brushed 
aside - not even those of the young and innocent. 

    "Uco-Menthol Salve" - in the ad which caught my eye - was offered as a  'butcher's kit' (cardboard chest tray, with neck strap - complete with several dozen cans of product, packaged in shoepolish-size cans).  Also included, I think, was a paper folding hat proclaiming one as a bona fide "Uco-Menthol Salve" salesman  (or as events were soon to prove, and more in keeping with modern sentiment in any event - salesperson).   There was also literature touting the merits of "Uco-Mentho Salve".  It was, as the old medicine show spiel has it  "... good for man or beast, internally or externally..." .  It cured warts, boils, and pimples on the belly,  put an end to arthritis and lumbago;  there were even reports of eyesight restored to the old and infirm when judiciously rubbed upon the eyelids.  Nausea, headache, and some mysterious affliction called "female complaints" were likewise banished by the healing benefits of this miraculous salve - the brainchild of one George W. Rhine. 

      If one sold the contents of his butcher's tray, the magazine ad continued, then one could redeem his earnings (in script) for ... a Daisy BB gun!  How many of my readers alive today can recall Daisy Air Rifles and their provocative ads which bespoke of a Wild West lifestyle that could be lived right in one's own  neighborhood, where your trusty BB gun was ever at your side?  Despite parental objection to guns in any form (alas!, another injunction that somehow failed  in my tortured upbringing...),  I determined I would become a "Uco-Mentho" route salesman and earn a coveted  Daisy air gun. 

     In course, my kit arrived, and with it qualms and cold feet at the thought of going up to some adult's front door - having the audacity to knock thereon - and then engage one of these superior beings in talk and convince them to buy of my wares.  Suddenly, this all seemed ... futile.  My heart failed me!

    My sister and I have never been close.  Our ways parted in life long ago - like Yogi Berra, "I came to a fork in the road, so I took it".  But in those days, we were yet paired siblings.   And Sis, several years my junior, nonetheless had the balls of a brass monkey.  For a cut in the winnings- perhaps a share in the rifle's ownership - she would handle the door-to-door contact...! 

    It was a done deal!  We lived in El Paso, Texas at the time - and one bright, dry, sunny morning (there having been no other such in far-off  El Paso since time began), we went forth - brother and sister - upon an unsuspecting world.  After only two or three turndowns, Sis got the hang of it very well, and while I bashfully hung back at the front gates, she went right up to the doors, knocked, made her pitch - and collected the money! 

     I would like to tell you that the air rifle was forthcoming in time but that was never to be.   Parental investigations were launched into the many conspiratorial meetings the pursuance of this venture took - and soon - all was out.  However, it was not a total bust: there was a catalog of alternate prizes  and since I had to recognize my defacto partner, an amicable settlement was ultimately reached on recompense. 

    But all these many years after and halfway back across a continent - to have run into the actual creator of "Uco-Mentho Salve" seemed to me at the time to be sort of miraculous.   George, of course, chuckled and chewed, chuckled and chewed in great appreciation at meeting a surviving member of one of his far-flung selling empires of days gone by... 

    "Uco-Mentho Salve" came in blue-and-silver checkered cans, I remember, with various graphics lithographed thereon.  Again, rummaging in his lower desk drawer, George pulled forth the very original artwork - by Ruthie - for those selfsame cans.  He paused in reverie: 

    "The Pure Food and Drug folks made us change that label, after a while," he  reminisced.

    "You see, Bernie, the original art made specific claims about how "Uco-Mentho Salve" cured this and cured that - a long list of the most common ills we could  make up, you know.  But the bureaucrats objected to that on the grounds it was misleading. 

    "What  to do?  The artwork was ready and done.  The can printer was waiting: we had a new shipment to get out...

    "Then Ruthie had an inspiration.. she did it all with graphics - not one word was said or claim made in print!  But the message was there just the same.  Every hick in El Paso where your "sales office" was located (chuckle) and every farmer across the nation saw it and got the message...

    Ruthie's solution was pure genius:  rather than make wordy, hard-to-defend claims in print, she rather drew a vanguard of troglodytes - sick and deformed - as they emerged from a dark and noisome cavern down at the lower right corner of the label.  As the troglodytes walked forth they came under the healing rays of a triumphant "Uco-Mentho Salve" sun  regnant in a "Uco-Mentho Salve" sky.  Forth they came, the lame and the halt and the blind - and as they poured forth into this healing sunshine, they threw their crutches in the air, they stripped their bandages from their limbs, they came erect - and the blind dropped their hold upon their guides and ran forth in the lead...  Sometimes, even writers have to admit, a picture is worth a thousand words... 

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