Grandma and the Vanilla Salesman



Grandma used to pepper her speech with lots of “sayings”. “Only one peacock per family; The cobbler’s children have no shoes; Look before you leap”, were some of her favorites.

She also would make-up her own sayings based on her life experiences. One saying she used over and over, -- (you couldn’t be in her company more than a few hours before you’d hear it )--was coined because of what happened one day between Grandma and the vanilla salesman.

After the war, a man named Bernie sold bottles of imitation vanilla extract, door to door. Bernie had lost a large portion of his right hand due to a war injury, and what was left was a mangled, red mass that looked more like a crimson starfish than a real hand.

Bernie used his deformed hand as a way to sell his vanilla. He’d knock on a door, and when the “lady of the house” opened the door, he’d shove his hand in front of her eyes – as she’d gasp, rattled by the horrific sight, he’d take a big step inside the house.

He would talk very fast – waving his hand back and forth while giving his spiel: “Good day Ma’am. My name’s Bernie and I lost the use of my hand in 1943 when I was tending to an injured soldier and a bullet flew through the air hitting my hand and the damn thing exploded before my eyes. Flesh, blood, bone – it was everywhere. Look at it; look at it. Look at it. This is what I brought home from the war. But I fought the good fight and thank God I’m lucky enough, to have made it home alive. But I can’t work as I did before, not with the hand, so I do this, I sell my vanilla. It’s good vanilla…one hundred percent imitation vanilla. It’s the best vanilla around. Here smell it.”

At this point he’d form the red starfish into a lobster-like claw, and remove the cap from the bottle with the injured hand, then he’d shove both the hand and the bottle right up in front of the woman’s nose. “Here, smell, smell, smell.”


Bernie’s vanilla cost three times what you’d pay at the local grocery store, and most of the women answering the door would never have purchased his vanilla except that he always managed to get his foot in the door by flashing his starfish hand, and once inside the house, he wouldn’t leave until you bought his vanilla.

He’d stay as long as it took.

The widow Chopsky said he stayed in her hallway for two hours until she gave up and paid him to leave. Once he left she threw the vanilla in the garbage because he’d opened the cap with that hand and the memory of it was enough to make her swear off vanilla for life.

Bernie was a master salesman and he never left a house without selling at least one small bottle of vanilla -- that was until he knocked on Grandma’s door.

It wasn’t that Grandma was heartless, but she’d heard Widow Chopsky’s story about the vanilla salesman who’d been knocking on doors in the neighborhood and she had no intentions of ever letting him in her house.

For a while, she was very cautious about opening the front door. She’d move the curtains and peek out, just to make sure it wasn’t Bernie. But this day was a warm day and the storm door was open and the screen door wasn’t latched, which meant Bernie was able to flash his hand, give his spiel, while pulling open the door and gaining entry into Grandma’s house before she even knew what was happening.

Grandma would have gladly given him the money for the vanilla to get him the hell out of her house, she said, but, she had no money to give him. Not even the few coins it would have taken to buy the extra-small bottle of vanilla he sold only to the people who swore they couldn’t afford the bigger bottle.

So there was Bernie two feet into the house and Grandma, without the money to stop him from waving around his mangled hand.

Grandma told him over and over again she had no money. Bernie shoved the hand and vanilla under Grandma’s nose for her to smell it. Bernie kept talking. Grandma repeated she had no money and he should go. Bernie wouldn’t move; Grandma couldn’t pay him to go-- so it was a “Mexican standoff” Grandma said.

Grandma says she asked him a dozen times to please go. Grandma says she offered him a blueberry muffin to take with him. Grandma says he ignored her pleas, didn’t want a muffin and told her he was sure she could find the money for a small bottle of vanilla and he’d wait right where he was till she got it.

So Grandma did the only thing she could do. She left Bernie standing in her “parlor” in her house --and she walked right past him, out the front door and down the street to the widow’s house.

Oh she was worried that maybe he was ransacking her home; maybe he’d steal her mother’s silver-plated tray or maybe he’d rummage through the ice box for food. But she just didn’t care. She wasn’t going to be trapped in her own home by a vanilla salesman, bad hand or not.

Mrs Chopsky offered to pay for the vanilla. But Grandma said no. Mrs. Chopsky said the poor guy was just trying to make a living after serving his country so heroically.

Grandma said he was nothing more than a huckster using his hand to frighten people – catch them off balance -- and even if he’d had a gun to her head, it didn’t matter. She didn’t have any damn money to buy his damn vanilla or any other damn vanilla for that matter.

Through Mrs. Chopsky’s window, Grandma kept her eyes on her own front door. It took a while, but finally she saw Bernie leaving her house. She’d won.

So, that is why you might have heard Grandma say, from time to time, one of her favorite “homemade” adages - -

“It takes more than a mangled hand to spend money you don’t have.”

It makes sense now doesn’t it?

Note: As it turns out, months later Grandma was telling the story of the vanilla salesman to one of Grandpa's poker buddies, a local police officer, and he told Grandma that Bernie had never served in the war. Bernie was nothing more than a local vagrant who'd been picked up for peeing in trash cans and for drunkeness. He drank up every cent he made selling vanilla, and when he was out of money, he'd start to drink the vanilla.

Bernie had mangled his hand when he fell down, dead drunk, and his hand was run over by a streetcar. It was no war injury at all.

We said to Grandma: "Gee that must have made you feel better about the whole thing, right?"

Grandma replied, "No, not really, didn't matter how he hurt his hand, what mattered then is the same thing that matters now, so remember these words: It takes more than a mangled hand to spend money you don't have.