Aluminum men.

A true story of salesmen visit to our home in the 1970s.

Aluminum men.

For a time, my father's lodge, (The Tall Cedars, which was a club
within the Masonic union ) lent him a slide projector in order for
him to try to attract new members to the organization. He soon discovered that one
could convert photo negatives from his Kodak camera into projection slides.
So, my father who always saved his camera negatives and had a slew of them
converted and he placed them in the slide projector, which he had
set up in the den, using a small white screen to project them to.

One Sunday afternoon, there was a knock on the door, and two men were there with attaché cases, and before they could even hit my father with the sales pitch, he invited them in and asked them to sit down. The two men were all smiles as they walked in and as they both tried to start talking about the advantages of aluminum siding. My father ignored all that and flipped on the projector and started telling them about the Tall Cedar’s fraternity, their motto, "fun, frolic, and fellowship". If that wasn’t enough fun, he then brought out the family slides. Their attempts to get a word in edgewise about the siding were easily ignored by my father. Partly because he had a yet undiagnosed but quite obvious hearing problem and partly because he was so enthused about showing the picturesque slides to anyone who would watch them. Anyone.

Meanwhile my mother, my sister and I knew how zealous and dedicated my father was to this group and the Masonic union, we knew it would be a long and fruitless afternoon for these two salesmen. Then suddenly my mother, who was known for hiding any giggling or grins on her face by hiding her face with a dish towel, did just that, and then quickly and quietly left the room. I then knew that my father was winding up for an all-out sales pitch about his fraternity.

One of the salesmen then mentioned the word value of the house with the new siding. Now my father loved to paint the house, and he did so religiously, every five years, whether it needed it or not. Still the slide show went on, the two salesmen yawning more and more in each passing hour. Finally, they started to edge towards the door. My father was calling to them, that he still had more slides to show them. The efforts of the salesmen were foiled, and we never saw them again.

Rev. Edward C McClelland 11-15-2025