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Got on some mailing list
About five years ago a friend signed my name to a magazine coupon for a trial size bottle of some stuff to stop falling hair. My hair had already stopped falling before I got the bottle, but since then I have been swamped with all kinds of advertisements about sure-fire remedies to keep from getting bald. They keep coming, even though I throw them in the waste basket as fast as they come in. What I think happens is that the company swap names or sell a sucker list for so much per name, and I'll bet somebody has sold my name to a thousand different firms. There's a bunch of people making roofing compounds which will absolutely stop roofs from leaking or your money will be cheerfully refunded and hardly a day passes but what I get a pamphlet from at least one of'em. Frankly, I don't think anybody can refund money and be cheerful about it, and I'll bet you have to fill out a form four feet long to get anything back. They would probably send a representative here from Spokane, Washington, to see if the roof was really leaking. How it Happens Maybe what the list-selling people do is send a man around to each town who writes down the names of people who don't look too bright. The fellow who comes to our town, I think, poses as a magazine salesman. On account of how I look kind of simple he always stops me on the streets and gives me his sales talk. What he does is to send you the magazine for nine years, all for a dollar and he throws in absolutely free a ballpoint pen, a new fangled can opener and a beautifully illustrated map of the Holy Land in color. You know and I know that he can't come out on a deal like that, so where does he make his money? He sells your name to a bunch of companies, that's what he does, and he buys some more maps, can openers and ball point pens. Then, in about a month, you start getting some folders on how to stop leaking roofs, falling hair and what to take for that tired, rundown feeling. The only way to keep from getting on the list is not to look stupid. It helps me some to wear a hat and colored glasses. Even then I have to walk real fast when I see one of the salesman looking at me coming down the street. All for Free There is a radio station doing their best to get me on another list. Late at night, they have a program where they ask people to send in a label from a bottle of Regal Crown Hair Dressing, telling in 25 words why its such good hair dressing. The winner gets a Gold Cadillac and it sure does sound tempting, but I get to thinking about all the mail I'll get over the next ten years and I keep on riding along in my old jalopy. Besides, it would be pretty hard from me to think up 25 words about hair-dressing, seeing as I don't have but 19 hairs.
There's still another list I'm on. Every few years I get a letter from Mexico marked "Personal" and "Confidential." A fellow down there is in jail and he's got a trunk full of gold hid out, and if I send him a thousand dollars he'll bribe the jailer so he can escape, after which he'll meet me some place and divide up the gold, fifty-fifty. That fellow must think I'm mighty simple. I know good and well, as long as he's been in jail, somebody has done found that gold and made off with it.
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