Encyclopedia Saleswomen

Growing up in the pre-internet era meant that your options for absorbing minutiae were limited. We had a set of encyclopedias, just like the above, I read it cover-to-cover many times. Those days are seemingly past; with neighborhood crime-watches and Covid infections door-to-door sales seem to be an anachronism (with the exception of home-improvement schemes.)

Recently, however, I experienced a couple of references to these literary dinosaurs. The first was in a vintage Perry Mason episode, where a young woman who sells them is startled to find the picture of her roommate's husband on the mantle of one of the homes she visits. It is not a good omen and the saleswoman ends up charged with the bigamous spouse’s murder! Perry saves the day, of course, and the woman is free to resume her career in direct marketing.

The second instance happened a few days later, in real life, when a young woman came up to my door and, speaking with a distinct accent, asked if I had any children in the home. I said no, and the woman began to expand her spiel: she was a college student from Poland, working a summer job program selling “educational packages” for children. It was so preposterous that I continued talking with her. From a glimpse of her brochure, I could see that she what was she was selling was an encyclopedia-like product. Either that, or she had gone to a lot of trouble to find homes from where her criminal overlords could abduct children. She did leave a card, after she left I looked up the firm and evidently it was legitimate.

Looking at it again, maybe there is a market nowadays for encyclopedias, they are certainly less scary than the internet or Fox News, and possibly more accurate than Wikipedia (although what I’ve read from Britannica is often just a simplified re-hash of Wikipedia articles.)

Powodzenia!