PEDDLERS 

Bartering was quite normal during the depression.  I recall traveling salesmen coming by selling their wares and trading for chickens, eggs, etc.  One salesman comes to mind.  A young college graduate came by selling ironing boards.  This peddler sold my mother an ironing board in exchange for several chickens.  His name was Donald Murk and would later become a schoolteacher, coach and principal at our school.  He had lived in California and owned a 16 cylinder Mercury car that was extremely fast.

But, our most favorite peddler of all was Mr. Scarberry.  Mr. Scarberry had built on the bed of his pickup a wooden box looking a great deal like what we now call pickup caps or campers.  The box had doors that opened to reveal shelves of wonderful merchandize. He stocked his shelves with items you would find in town at the dry goods store like shirts, overalls and even straw hats.  His shelves also contained things normally found at the hardware store, like tools and pots and pans. 

But, the one thing that we liked most of all was he sold candy.  Our favorite penny candy was called “Guesswhats”.   The Guesswhats contained caramel candy along with little prizes.  The idea from the name was to guess what was the prize.  He had a route throughout the county and came by our place once a week.  When one of us children spotted him driving down the dusty road with his “rooster tail” of dust rising from the rear of his pickup, it was a festive occasion hailed by the shouting of “Mr. Scarberry is coming, Mr. Scarberry is coming…” which brought everybody running.  He had a chicken coop on the top of the wooden box into which he would put chickens my mother and others would use in exchange for his goods.  The Guesswhats were a penny apiece, for which we could trade old zinc jar lids with the glass seal broken out.  They were worth a penny each.