Those who are interested in me already know my name.
So I don't know why it would be of interest to anybody else, but by way of an introduction,
I ought to say that my name is John Dunn. I live in Gilbert, Michigan.
I have a grandson who records things of this sort, and he's asked me to sit down here
and do some storytelling, and I'll do it to the best of my ability.
Again, the experiences that come to me, they never seem to end.
You hear talk about people who are selling snake oil,
and I've been in those towns when a peddler would come through and he would put on some kind of a routine.
He might have one woman who's a dancer, and she'd be up on the little stage he'd constructed,
and she'd be dancing and carrying on, and people in these small towns are excited by anything.
It's different when the train comes in. People run down to the station to watch the train come in.
So anyway, he's done it. He's hawking this stuff in the bottle, and I forget what it was supposed to do to you,
but he said, and folks, it's a bargain for 50 cents, and nobody's making a move.
And then finally, somebody says, I'll give a try. Give me a bottle of that.
And somebody else said, okay, me too. Let me have one. Turns out these are plants.
He's taking these people with him, and they're buying first, and then other people start to buy.
And in line with that, there's a small ton of stuff.
We would go to the county fairs, and the county fairs are pretty limited businesses,
because in order to pull a bunch of people together, you really can't go through the whole county.
You go to a section, and then you've got what? Maybe two dozen farms you're going to pull.
Okay, and they put on a little show, and they might have some kind of an amusement ride that they construct,
although it's nothing very elaborate. And then there would be, and I think this is probably for the gamblers,
if there are any, but they would put on a show, and they would either have a couple of boxers or a couple of wrestlers.
And the boxers now talk about, listen to this, the boxers, one of them would wear a hood, and he'd be dressed in black.
The other guy would be dressed with a white cape, you know, and he'd be one foot that would hit stood properly,
and the other guy would be bent over like this, and the guy in the black would be winning.
He'd just be whamming the other, you know, just terrible. If it was wrestling, he'd slam him on the floor,
and everybody'd go boo boo. And then all of a sudden the tables turned, the white guy came alive,
and boy, he was really mashing this other guy. I'm telling you, people jeered and yelled.
Oh, oh, I loved it. I was sure you too.
