Welcome Mat Still Out for Fuller Brush Man

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

A young man peers out the living room window, then opens the door.

It’s dark inside. A TV drones.

“Maaaaaahhhhhm?”

“Hi,” says the woman coming to the door, blinking into the sunlight. “I don’t think I need anything today.”

“OK,” the Fuller Brush man says cheerfully. “Would you like to take a look through the catalogue? Some new items there.”

She flips through. “OK, give me one of these bottles of pine cleaner and some of that stain remover.”

He takes out his order pad and begins to write.

*

For a man teetering on the edge of obsolescence, staring into the abyss, Barry Holden’s a pretty calm guy.

“Yeah, Fuller Brush was a household word 25 years ago,” he says. “If you lived in your house more than a month, you probably had one come to your door. But as time went on, ladies went to work and the salesmen just started to disappear into the woodwork.”

Holden is a piece of Americana slipping away in this Donna Reed-less world. In its 1950s heyday, the company had about 30,000 people trudging door-to-door in neighborhoods where windows didn’t have bars and pit bulls didn’t lie in wait.

The Fuller Brush Co. is not completely doing away with its door-to-door independent distributors, but Holden’s occupation is heading for the La Brea tar pits of careers as the company offers other ways to sell. A network sales program concentrates on selling to an established network of friends, family and businesses, and on sponsoring other people to do the same. Salespeople can also sell at home parties, fairs and flea markets or over the phone.

But if any city should still boast a door-to-door Fuller Brush salesman, Whittier seems the natural choice. Single-story homes sit neatly in placid suburban neighborhoods where Christmas lights still dangle from some roofs and a plaque engraved “The Smiths” hangs from a porch. Here, the ‘50s don’t seem that far away.

Holden’s brown loafers tap-tap-tap on the pavement as he strides from one house to another, calling on regular customers, 1,200 in all, rotating neighborhoods every couple of months. Now 47, he’s been with Fuller Brush for 20 years; he’s worked in Whittier, where he’s lived and raised a family, for 15 years. He inherited his route from the previous salesman. It’s stayed pretty steady, with new customers replacing the old.

“People don’t stay in a house like they did years ago,” Holden says. “People bought a house 50 years ago and they’d stay there until the kids were grown and they died. There are very few like that in Whittier. There are more rental properties; they might be there two, three, five years, and then they’re gone.”

The customers’ work schedules dictate Holden’s hours. Neighborhoods are trolled from late afternoon until 8 p.m.

“To find people home during the day is just about impossible,” Holden explains.

He looks like a small Kenny Rogers, black hair turned almost all white, a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and skin darkened from the sun. Updated from his ‘50s counterparts who worked in suits and ties, Holden wears a peach polo shirt and brown pants with a worn leather belt. There is never a drop of sweat, even in near-100-degree heat. He walks purposefully, carrying his tote bags of sample products and free gifts, sometimes the only person on the street.

*

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

“Hi, how are you doing today?” he asks the middle-aged woman in shorts who answers the door. The TV in the living room provides background noise.

“How about a free gift today?” He holds out a plastic grocery store sack filled with dish scrubbers, spatulas and measuring scoops, then hands over the catalogue.

She orders a few things and the two start chatting, small talk, about the economy, the weather, the dichondra. They are joined by the woman’s husband and the three go on for 20 minutes before Holden says good-bye.

“Sometimes I really feel that I should have been a psychologist,” he says and chuckles a bit. “People will really cry on your shoulder when you’re the Fuller Brush man.

“It’s actually cheap therapy. Some people are very quiet. I’ve called on them for four or five years and we’ll chat, and then all of a sudden this one time I come by and they just unload.

“I think therapy is talking and somebody listening. I find the world today does not want to listen to people. That’s the sad part about it.”

This is life the way a Fuller Brush man sees it: widows desperate to talk to someone; young, single mothers living with their parents; families trying to make ends meet; retirees filling their days with baby-sitting; transient neighborhoods where people never know their next-door neighbors. And always, always the TV on.

“There’s a lot that stay home and watch TV. If I didn’t work in the evenings, I might be at home vegging with the rest of these people,” Holden says with a laugh. “Most people live a kind of mundane life.”

But thinking about that doesn’t send him into a spiraling funk.

“I feel like part of the family out here,” he says. “Kids come up to me and say, ‘The Fuller Brush man!’ Most kids don’t know who the Fuller Brush man is, but these do ‘cause I’ve been coming here since they were babies.

“People have always been receptive to me,” he says. “I always felt like I’d been given some kind of gift where I could talk to people and not be phony. I hope they like me and the products, and I think a lot of times I really feel--and I’m not bragging about myself--but I’ve always felt they bought the products because I presented myself properly to them. I mean, let’s face it, there are 1,500 products, probably not all the same quality, but that do the same thing, that you could buy at any market.”

He stops at a home and chats briefly with the wife, then the husband.

They talk about work, the neighborhood, before the husband says enthusiastically: “This is a great guy! He comes over, takes the order, drops off the stuff the next day, there’s a bill in the mailbox--you just don’t get that kind of service anymore.”

Holden smiles. And you know that this is why he’s the Fuller Brush man.