Traveling sales revealed treasures

When was the last time you encountered a traveling salesman?

Not a candidate or a religious proselytizer, but an honest to goodness traveling salesman knocking on your door.

They are as rare these days as thoughtful politicians.

But back in the day, they were a staple of the American commercial scene.

The doorbell would ring, and there would be some road-weary guy (always a guy) with an oversized suitcase full of brushes or cleaning supplies.

Or maybe he had an overpriced vacuum cleaner he was ready to demonstrate at a moment’s notice by dumping a bag of dirt on your living room floor.

It was a tough job, but for the most part it was an honest one.

My father did a stint as a traveling salesman.

Graduating from college in the midst of the Great Depression, he found work wherever he could. At one point he was a chauffeur and later he labored as a bundle boy at The Jay Garment Company.

But he also put in his time on the road selling door to door.

Dad was a Lever Brothers man, as I remember it. That is, he peddled soap products and cleaning supplies made by Lever Brothers.

The work involved long days and minimal rewards. Miles of residential sidewalk could be counted between meaningful sales. And train rides from one burg to another meant sharing a tiny passenger car bathroom with a couple dozen other salesmen who needed to shave, clean up and make themselves presentable before rolling into the next station.

But there were some perks as well.

One — which Dad took us to explore years later — was Phil Smidt’s.

Phil Smidt’s was an unprepossessing restaurant in an industrial neighborhood at the edge of Lake Michigan. Its location on Calumet Avenue in Hammond was pretty much across the street from the Lever Brothers plant there.

Phil Smidt’s was also the home of amazing frog’s legs.

Legend had it that the frogs were actually caught in the marshy area along the edge of Lake Michigan. Then the cooks at Phil Smidt’s worked their magic on them.

I was about 14 the first time Dad took me there, and I was more than a little skeptical about the notion of chowing down on an amphibian’s hindquarters.

But I must have been feeling adventurous, because I tried them and was hooked.

“Tastes like chicken” was the common phrase, but the frog’s legs at Phil Smidt’s had a taste all their own.

Seated at long tables, usually with strangers who had also come searching for something special, diners jostled with one another, went through numerous napkins in an effort to keep their fingers clean and tried to hear one another over the often beer-fueled conversations around them.

To a 14-year-old, it was a delight. And if discovering Phil Smidt’s had been the only part of my father’s experience as a traveling salesman, I might have hit the road myself, following in his footsteps.

It wasn’t of course. It was just the best part, the part he wanted to share with his family.

Years later, a group of us who had been in Chicago for a printing equipment trade show stopped in for another feast. It did not disappoint.

Sadly, the place closed in 2007. Apparently not enough traveling salesmen or former traveling salesmen were still coming through its doors.

And as to the salesmen themselves, my last real encounter with one was nearly 50 years ago when I was part of a bunch of college students who listened to the earnest sales pitch for a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica.

We didn’t know it then, but both the encyclopedia and the salesman were endangered species.