Post 7

"Well, it don't do nobody no good to disappoint a customer, nosirree.  When a door-to-door man had to give up the trade or moved on to a better route, they did their best to hand on their business to one of their young'uns, or to a cousin or to somebody else who they could depend on.  There was somethin' like a special tie between the door-to-door men and the families they served, which don't exist no more.  It's a sad, sad thing really, to see what it's all come to."

"My husband was a friend of them families, even the white ones.  Before the war, being friends with white folks was rare indeed, but my husband was thought well of by blacks folks and whites folks alike."

"In small towns all people seem to get along better.  People are noticed more and are respected more, and that's a fact.  It would have been more likely for the sun not to rise one morning than for the Egg Man not to be in Trustville on a Saturday."

"Respect is very important for an Egg Man?" I asked, ever in search of a quote.

"Oh, he weren't always been the Egg Man.  For a long, long time he was the Egg Boy, until folks found out that the Egg Boy had young'uns old enough to be able to help him with his business."

The old couple chuckled together.

I took a few more pictures of their jollity.

"Was your father an Egg Man?" I asked.

"No, my daddy was a coal miner and died young in a cave in."  Even in this revelation there was something to find humorous.  He smiled.  "My Momma liked to say He couldn't of been buried deeper for cheaper."

With these words the man looked at his wife to give her strength.  It was obvious that something good or bad was affecting the woman emotionally.  I decided not to go there...yet.

"Tell me about your childhood," I asked in a rather fake merry tone.

"When I weren't not even half grown, my Momma got sickly and we didn't have two nickels to rub together."

"But they was too proud to accept any charity," said Esther.

"Still am.  I don’t take no charity and I don’t offer none neither.  That way folks stay equal don't you see."

"Any siblings?"

"Any what?" he asked, his brow wrinkled.

"Brothers or sisters."

"I had me a older sister, named Huldah.  In the good book, Huldah was a profetess.  Anyhow, she left home during the depression.  She just walked off barefoot one day, and found work with a woman who took men's suits and cut them up and redone 'em up into women's suits, by gettin' rid of the worn seats and knees, don't you see.  People did stuff like that back then.  Times was hard, real hard."

"Times was hard.  Everybody did what they had to do, otherwise their kids would have starved slap to death," said Esther, nodding at her own recollection.

"I have never been hungry in my life," recalled Jeremias.  "For a while I wondered what it would be like if I had children and had to worry about them goin' hungry."

"Do you have young'uns of your own?" asked Esther of me.

"No, ma'am."

"Why not?" she asked as if I were being accused of a crime.