941: Esther said, . . .
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 22 concludes
ESTHER SAID, “I loved that bit about ‘I’m pregnant and it didn’t even wake me up.’
“Uh-oh,” said Otto, “I think the conversation is going to take one of those anti-male turns.”
It might have, except that Clark, who may have had one too many, gave it an anti-isolationist turn instead.
“Jeez, I miss door-to-door salesmen,” he claimed. “It used to be kind of exciting when somebody would ring the doorbell, and you’d go there and it was somebody you didn’t know. Now you’d call the cops, you see somebody you don’t know going around the neighborhood. You’d press the panic button on your alarm system. It’s the fucking fortress mentality. The bomb-shelter mentality. We’ve all retreated into our little houses and our little neighborhoods, and we only open the door to people we know and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves, but not in my back yard. I’ve got my door locked, and I do not choose to know anybody I don’t already know, thank you. Who’s that knockin’ at my back door, somebody I don’t know, somebody not like me? Bringing me news of the world that lies beyond my little corner of it? No, thank you. Slam! Not interested. That’s why there aren’t any door-to-door salesmen anymore. No intrusions allowed. No interlopers. We don’t want the outside world worming its way into the isolated little nest we made for ourselves, you know what I mean? That’s what you’ve done here, isn’t it, Peter? Tried to do? Isolate yourself? Cut yourself off from the world? Does it work? Have you succeeded in keeping the world away?”
“No,” I said, and things might have gotten very gloomy indeed if Louise hadn’t struck up a boogie-woogie introduction to Miranda’s lively and hilarious improvised version of the Yummy Good Baked Goods jingle.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 941, Mark Dorset considers Advertising: Jingles: Yummy Good Baked Goods from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I Am, and At Home with the Glynns.
You can buy hardcover and paperback editions of all the books at Lulu.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.