Sales Convention

"Thelma, would you get me a glass of milk?" my husband mumbled in the middle of the night.  I was too sleepy to comply, and this morning at breakfast Howard said, "I had the craziest dream last night about when I was working in my dad's store and drinking that delicious raw milk!"  So that's what it was about.  I laughed and asked him to tell me more.

"Well," he said, "We had a Wonder Bread bread man named Sparky Sparkman who was a great friend of my dad's.  After he made the delivery at the store in the mornings, Dad let him take our bank deposit and deposit it!"

"Really?" I responded, but knowing how my future father-in-law was always too busy to leave the store, I understood how he would have a good friend take care of it.

"Then when Sparky came back by to check our bread supply,  he would go behind the meat counter, get out a chub of bologna, run it through the slicer, and make sandwiches!"  He said they all enjoyed an impromptu lunch of cheese (Sparky sliced that, too!) and bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread.  I asked if he opened a jar of mayonnaise, too, but Howard told  me they kept a jar open for that.

"I remember Sparky getting out the cardboard "boats" (paper meat trays), shaking up a quart of milk with cream on the top, and pouring us all a boat of milk to go with our sandwiches!"  He was shaking his head wonderingly at the memories.

"The bread man sounds like quite a character," I remarked, to which Howard responded, "Oh, he was!  One day he got in a fight with the Bond bread man!"  It  seems there was a dispute over the invisible line of demarcation where the competing brands of bread were lined up, and the Wonder bread  man invited the other, younger, man outside to settle it.

"Johnny, the Bond bread man, was a good friend of Dad's, too,"  Howard explained.  "My dad had to go out and break it up." Then he broke out laughing.  "But not before Johnny knocked Sparky into the big Buick belonging to Jack, the Cake and Cookie man.  It made a huge dent in his front fender!" he went on.

"What happened then?" I prompted him.

"Well, Jack was also a friend of Dad's, but he just shook his head and reached back and got an empty quart milk bottle, put it under the fender and popped the dent back into place with the bottle!"   

It sounded like quite a day at Harry's Grocery and Market,  and I'm sure quite entertaining at that.  Howard told me the two guys apologized to each other, and his dad took a grocery marking pen and drew a line on the shelf defining both brand's space.  I guess he thought it was better than a line drawn in the sand by two explosive personalities, one of whom was aptly named Sparky!