A Good Pitch

My Dad loved a gimmick.  He was a sucker for any sort of gadget that promised improvement or employed an exaggerated claim in any way.  If someone told my Dad that they had a product that was better than the product he already used, he would switch without a second thought and find a way to agree wholeheartedly.  My Dad was not the magician who captivated his audience with feats of magic, he was the guy in the front row who came to the show prepared to be amazed.  And he always was.  Lucky guy!  

My Mom, on the other hand, was a skeptic.  She had to be because Dad was so eager to believe.  If she didn’t put the brakes on him, he would have had their house full to the rafters of things he’d seen on TV or products sold by the salesmen who came to the door to hawk their wares.  Even so, we actually HAD a Ginsu knife.  It sliced—it diced—it made julienned French fries.  Just like all of the other knives in our house.  The complimentary vegetable peeler that they threw in “just for ordering”, was a nice touch though. 

My Mom always sent my Dad to the store with a written list of what to buy because if she didn’t, he would come home hours later without the things she’d asked for but with, say, an electric can opener.  We’d all gather around this miracle of technology and Dad would give a brief explanation followed by a demonstration just like the one he’d been given in the store.  It was exciting for us kids, but my mother would always guard her enthusiasm and instead just ask how much this nonsense cost. 

Sometimes the gadget was no sooner set down on the kitchen table and proclaimed to be the latest wonder of the modern world, when it would be back on the front seat of our family’s Ford Falcon and on its way back to the store.   

For someone like my Dad who loved a good sales pitch, there was no finer place to scratch that itch than at our city’s Fall Fair.  While the rest of us went squealing to the midway in search of rides and junk food, he would quietly wander off to the exhibition hall that housed the sales folks. 

As soon as you walked into the cool of that cavernous building, the sales would start being pitched—there was no escape.  To the left would be one of the many vacuum cleaner dealers with their patch of carpet, clutching a container of dirt and ready to dramatically illustrate the suction of their uprights.  To the right might be a line of hair tonics developed to address any real or imagined problem with one’s follicles.  There were stalls of hand-tooled leather goods beside stalls for water purifiers beside stalls for miracle food processors beside stalls for cutting boards that were indestructible.  There were back scratchers, exercise equipment, healing crystals, aluminum siding, Tupperware, massaging chairs, cleaning products, and more—all patiently waiting for the chance to demonstrate and oversell their outstanding qualities to anyone willing to listen.   

And it was in this shopper’s paradise that Dad found the lavender sachets one year.  It was the late seventies and if you were there you might remember the lavender sachets, housed in those little woven baskets that hung by a silken cord pulled through the top. Curiously, my Dad had a terrible sense of smell—he would not have been able to smell smoke if the house had been on fire—but oh, the scent of lavender that year made his knees weak for some reason.   Dad eagerly listened as the salesperson extolled their many uses around the home and I think he bought the 8-pack, but it might have been the 10. 

Mom stood tolerantly by as he scattered them around the house.  He put one in the car, but our eyes would start to water as soon as we got into that confined space and we made him take it out.  He was okay with that because they were everywhere else.  Anyone who unknowingly hung their coat in our front closet was haunted by the aroma of lavender for several days after leaving our house.  The linen closet was an even worse spot though because that door would only ever get opened a couple of times a week and when it did, the opener would get a full-face punch of lavender before they could grab what they needed and slam the door shut again.  My sister and I (probably Mom too) quickly started to remove the little baskets of lavender from our closets and drawers and hide them in the basement where they couldn’t do much harm.  For an entire year, our basement smelled like the French countryside in blossom.

Each year’s annual visit to The Fair brought a new delight that my dear Dad would triumphantly present to the rest of us (wonderous anti-fogging eyeglass wipes, beaded car seat covers to make driving a dream, cleaning cloths that dusted, cleaned windows, and left a car’s interior looking as good as it had the day it rolled off the assembly line) but we had all lost faith in his taste after that year of the lavender sachets.  

To this day, the smell of lavender immediately sees me throwing the “NOPE!” switch rather than leaving me calm and soothed as it does for so many others.  One whiff serves not only to remind me of my father, with his kind heart and child-like curiosity, but also reminds me of just what can be accomplished in 2 minutes by a truly convincing sales pitch.