Originally posted by Fries Les, that is a great story! Thanks for that. My generation hasn't seen that kind of thing although I once saw a horse and cart roaming around Dublin many years ago. When I grew up we had this: File:SRV-wagen.jpg - Wikimedia Commons filled whit daily groceries. And we had one family in the village that earned their money selling eggs from door to door. I alway's felt sorry for the young kids that helped their dad doing that.
Glad you liked it.
When you mentioned young kids helping their dad sell eggs door to door. It provided another memory. Back in the late '50's (and '60's) as a typical, red blooded Canadian boy, I played hockey (defense) for the local community club team.
There weren't any sponsors back then and again I was about 9-10 years old at this particular time. The team and parents raised money for hockey jerseys. We did all sorts of things, but mostly they were buying food products of one kind or another...and then going out and selling door to door during evenings and Saturdays.
One experience I recall very warmly, was a fund raising event in which my parents did a lot of the organization.
They bought a number of huge flat packages -holding 4 dozen ) of donuts from a local bakery (got a deal
) and my dad and I loaded them into the back of our '58 Ford Ranchwagon...which was a huge station wagon. We folded down the 2nd row passenger seat for even more cargo room. My mother had bought some packs of brown paper lunch bags and we drove off to meet the rest of the team at a pre determined spot one early Saturday morning.
About 5 members of the hockey team, including yours truly...went door to door, knocking on doors...politely...and asking the occupants if they were interested in buying fresh, glazed donuts- baked early that morning. We would explain that we were raising money to pay for our hockey Jerseys and invariably transactions were completed on many a doorstep...the idea of a freshly baked glazed donut or two...early Saturday morning was hard to resist, especially for the man of the household..
My mother organized things like a genial Sergeant-Major. We would run to the door, ring the bell/knock...recite our spiel....collect our order regarding how many donuts and my mom would be sitting on the dropped tailgate of the big Ford wagon...tongs in hand....filling the paper bag with the number of donuts, per that order. Repeat.
It was a lot of fun, people loved the product and the timing (figured out by dad)...service was almost instantaneous and we raised a fair amount of money towards our hockey jerseys.