My mother liked to buy from people who sold door-to-door. There aren’t many door-to-door salespeople who get a welcome these days. Maybe Brownies with Girl Scout cookies or Cub Scouts with popcorn, but not many others. I haven’t seen an Avon lady in decades.
My mother bought from a “huckster,” a vegetable salesman in an old school bus painted blue. And of course, there was the Fuller Brush Man.
Recently, Linda Matchan at the Boston Globe wrote about a Massachusetts-based Fuller Brush Man who is still making sales after 40 years.
Al Cohen, she says, has been at it second-longest of the three remaining Fuller Brush Men in Massachusetts — “40 years with the Fuller Brush Co., which was launched 110 years ago by Alfred C. Fuller in his sister’s Somerville basement. He’s done it by selling one Angle Broom and Wooly Bully Hand Duster at a time.
“ ‘Toward the end of summer, he appears. And we’re elated,’ said Melissa Zeller, a longtime Cohen customer who lives in the South End and has a summer home in Hull. …
“On a recent morning, he worked Hull’s Allerton Hill neighborhood. He’d brought a replacement mop head for one customer and hand soap for an older woman who’d been buying it for years.
“ ‘How you been?’ he greeted the customer, who was slow to answer the door.
‘ ‘Very sick,’ she said. ‘I had two heart attacks and I lost Tom.’
“The day was hot and it was slow going. … Then things got better. Maureen Keiller and Patrick Miehe bought a broom after Cohen assured them it was ‘laboratory tested to last over a million sweeps.’ Afterward, George and Helen Kelley ordered several items, though it was a challenging sell at first.
“ ‘I don’t think I’ll pay $25 for a broom,’ said Helen, 82. ‘It’ll last,’ said Cohen. ‘How long will I last?’ she said.
“For that matter, how long will Al Cohen keep at it?
“ ‘It keeps me going,’ he said. ‘And if I stopped, it would almost be a letdown for some of my customers. Some of them depend on me.’ ”
More here.
Photo: Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
Al Cohen, 64, estimates that he still has about 1,000 regular customers for his Fuller cleaning products.
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