We were selling darned little Skyway Soap; Centerville is conservative
about new brands-I'll bet some of them made their own soap. But when I
showed up for work that day I had to tell Mr. Charton about it. He dug out
two dustcovered boxes and put them on the counter. Then he phoned his
jobber in Springfield.
He really did right by me. He marked Skyway Soap down almost to cost
and pushed it-and he almost always got the wrappers before he let the
customer go. Me, I stacked a pyramid of Skyway Soap on each end of the
fountain and every coke was accompanied by a spiel for good old Skyway,
the soap that washes cleaner, is packed with vitamins, and improves your
chances of Heaven, not to mention its rich creamy lather, finer
ingredients, and refusal to take the Fifth Amendment. Oh, I was shameless!
Anybody who got away without buying was deaf or fast on his feet.
If he bought soap without leaving the wrappers with me he was a
magician. Adults I talked out of it; kids, if I had to, I paid a penny for
each wrapper. If they brought in wrappers from around town, I paid a dime
a dozen and threw in a cone. The rules permitted a contestant to submit
any number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper
or reasonable facsimile.
I considered photographing one and turning out facsimiles by the gross,
but Dad advised me not to. "It is within the rules, Kip, but I've never
yet known a skunk to be welcome at a picnic."
So I used soap. And I sent in wrappers with slogans:
"I use Skyway Soap because-
-it makes me feel so clean."
-highway or byway, there's no soap like Skyway!"
-its quality is sky-high."
-it is pure as the Milky Way."
-it is pure as Interstellar Space."
-it leaves me fresh as a rain-swept sky."
And so on endlessly, until I tasted soap in my dreams. Not just my own
slogans either; Dad thought them up, and so did Mother and Mr. Charton. I
kept a notebook and wrote them down in school or at work or in the middle
of the night. I came home one evening and found that Dad had set up a card
file for me and after that I kept them alphabetically to avoid repeating.
A good thing, too, for toward the last I sent in as many as a hundred a
day. Postage mounted, not to mention having to buy some wrappers.
