Charles Chips

During the late 1960s and early 1970s we used to receive home delivery of cans of Charles Chips. This economic model worked well until the mid-1970s when the price and availability of gas made it much less profitable than it had been previously. Though in its day the site of a Charles Chips truck in the neighborhood was a welcome site indeed. Besides the convenience of home delivery, the potato chips were good and could be easily transported around the house as needed. When we had friends over to visit the introduction of a Charles Chips can was always a pleasurable interruption to whatever we might be doing.

Today with far fewer people at home on a regular basis as housewives, and a greater reluctance to open the front door to strangers,  services like Charles Chips and the Fuller Brush Man are much harder to maintain than they once were in suburbs. There was also the Avon Lady who would visit on a regular basis and the man who sharpened knives. All the knife sharpener would do was pick a spot in the neighborhood and clang his bell in order to tell people to bring their knives and tools to be sharpened on his portable grind stone.

I guess the lack of these strangers in our suburban neighborhoods make them safer now, but it also makes them more homogeneous and a bit less interesting. It was a rare kid among us who didn't look forward to the site of a stranger invading the quiet of our neighborhood and stirring things up with their door bell ringing and bell clanging.  I sure know we looked forward to their visits when I was a kid. These people didn't scare us or annoy us in the least. At times we opened lemonade and candy stands to encourage them to stop, even if they had just lost they way on our side of town.

In those days we knew who belonged in our neighborhood and who didn't because people were less transient than they are now. Did we take chances when we momentarily allowed these strangers into our lives? Of course we did! This was part of the fun we used to have. It might have even helped fill in the gaps in our then limited life experience. The end result was that our eyes were being opened to the immense world around us, and it wasn't being done via TV or radio. It was being done close to home in our own neighborhood.