Online Journal - The Big Brick Review: Building on the narrative of our lives...brick by brick.

The Big Brick Review 2025 Essay Contest: 2nd Place ($300)

Building on the narrative of our lives...one brick at a time.

White Cloverine Brand Salve

by Jeanne Brinkman Grinnan

MONEY WASN'T EASY to come by when I was a kid. Collecting empty soda bottles for the 2-cent deposit on each was practically unheard of. We rarely had soda and, if we did, my mother redeemed the bottles herself. Even those few pennies were important to the family budget.

An allowance was another fluid commodity. If my parents had the bills caught up, then the 25 or 50 cents allotment would be forthcoming. But if new school uniforms or textbooks were in the budget, then the allowance went by the wayside. So, when I discovered the ad in the back of the Superman comic books we inherited from our cousins—the ad that described the wonderful premiums I could earn from selling White Cloverine Brand Salve—I was thrilled. Little did I know of the pitfalls of retail enterprise.

I clipped the tiny request form from the corner of the page and wheedled a stamp out of my mother, all the while dreaming of the telescope I would earn, or the camera, or the walkie-talkies . . . why, a girl could even earn a pony if she were industrious enough! And who knew what other wonders were available through the catalogue? It was all so simple . . . earn cash or premiums by selling one-ounce canisters of an emollient, a balm, an unguent, a cooling cream intended to soothe, to ease, to calm, to quiet all kinds of skin irritation—chapped hands, chapped lips, rough elbows. A miracle cure for a mere 35 cents and the product carried the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, to boot.

I mailed the form and waited impatiently for the arrival of my first order of salve. I haunted the mailman, meeting him on the corner of the street, begging him to give me a sneak preview of the contents of his leather mailbag; I ran home from school at lunchtime to see if my samples had been delivered while I labored over the intricacies of diagramming sentences and reducing fractions to their lowest common denominators.

Days turned into weeks until, finally, the salve arrived in a heavy cardboard cylinder, capped off top and bottom with metal lids. I pried the end open, and a dozen little flat cans of salve rolled out onto the kitchen linoleum. I lined them up like checkers on a board, stacking them in threes and dividing them by twos. I poured over the catalogue of premiums curled inside the tube; the gifts were even more spectacular than I had anticipated. The array included a fountain pen, an imitation pearl necklace, a bicycle, binoculars, even a cuckoo clock. But the premium worthy of my deepest desire was a cunning little typewriter – it nearly took my breath away.

A typewriter! I couldn’t imagine the luxury of having such a machine of my own. I envisioned the ribbons of words I would spin out daily. I’d write fairy tales filled with magic fish and warty wizards; I’d join a pen pal club, also advertised in the back pages of the comic book, and write long, elaborate missives sharing personal secrets with a kindred spirit in Glasgow, Scotland or Sydney, Australia. I’d type all my homework assignments and prove to the world what a well-organized, intelligent student I could be. Like Lois Lane, reporter for The Daily Planet, I’d write, edit, and opine, with regularity, a small neighborhood broadside that I’d sell for 5 cents a copy. I’d sell Want Ads just like our local daily papers, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and Times-Union.

“Lose your cat?” Advertise here.

“Want your lawn mowed?” Hire me.

All of this, the world of the literati, was just 120 cans away. I only had to sell ten cylinders’ worth of salve and the typewriter would be mine.

The rest of the story is predictable enough. Selling the first few cans was easy: my mother bought one, my aunt who lived next door bought another; my grandmother who came to visit on Sunday bought the third. I remember thinking, “Three down, just 117 to go!” I set out to canvas the neighborhood. A friendly community, or so I thought, I viewed every front door as an opportunity. Pretty soon, I’d be typing practice sentences like the ones I’d seen in the touch-typing textbook I’d borrowed from the library: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. I was lost in a dream world of fine office supplies: ink eradicator, erasable bond, carbon paper!

Caught up in this typographic reverie, I entered the apartment house across the street figuring that I’d sell the nine remaining cans with ease. I was shocked when the first customer whom I did not know personally turned me away, my salve in hand. It didn’t take long to discover that most people already had a big fat jar of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, a very similar product, lost among the ointments in their medicine cabinets. Eventually, I returned home blaming my poor salesmanship on rainy April weather rather than a lack of interest in my miracle product. I’d try again tomorrow after school, I thought.

The next day was not unlike the first, and I went further afield in an effort to incite interest in the salve. To no avail. The people on Primrose Street were just as reluctant to purchase the miracle balm as those on Owen. I sold one can, but found my enthusiasm flagging. After a third day of dismal sales, I opted for going roller skating around the block instead.

The first of the dunning letters arrived in early May. Though addressed to me, it had been opened by my mother – prompted by the Past Due notice stamped on the envelope. She met me at the front door after school with letter in hand. Panic flooded over me as I read the itemized statement demanding that I pay for 12 cans of salve @ .35 per can: $4.20 plus .80 to cover shipping and handling. A whopping $5.00! I understood the shipping part but was confounded as to how the handling figured in. What I did know is that I didn’t have anywhere near $5.00. In fact, I had “borrowed” from what little money I had collected already, planning on replacing it with my rather ephemeral allowance.

My mother made it very clear that any after-school plans I may have had to go roller skating with my best friend, Linda, were completely dashed; instead, I would gather up the unsold tins of salve and renew my entrepreneurial efforts.

This second foray into the world of retail sales was no more successful than the first and, after canvassing the neighborhood for several more days, I stowed the unsold cans of salve in the back of my closet where I hid them inside a shoe box for good measure.

The springtime days were sunny enough and the trees that lined both sides of our narrow street burgeoned with new growth creating a leafy green canopy. The nights, on the other hand, were filled with fret and worry. At ten years old, I had already learned well not to rock the boat. The hidden shoebox haunted me; its presence was undeniable. Over and over while on the edge of sleep, I watched the tins come to life, glowing an eerie green in the darkness of the shoebox while the typewriter faded into the ghostly mist.

When the third notice appeared, I knew that finally the moment of reckoning was upon me. Stamped in bright red letters across the envelope were these words: FINAL NOTICE. With shaking hands, I tore it open and read the enclosed letter informing me that the whole matter would be turned over to a collection agency if payment in full was not forthcoming.

I had no recourse but to turn to my father for help.

A small, mahogany knee-hole desk sat in the corner of the dining room. It was protected by a large, rectangular blotter, an oval leatherette cup containing an assortment of pens and pencils, and what my parents referred to as the business box. Unpaid bills, stamps, and my father’s checkbook were kept there. I put the envelope on the desk and awaited the summons while longing for relief from my nightly worry.

I know I was in the kitchen when I heard him: “Jeanne, come in here.” Maybe I was drying the dishes. Perhaps I was doing my homework puzzling over long division or memorizing the natural resources of New York State. I know it seemed like a very long walk to the dining room. My father was a gentle man whose forehead was lined by money-worries and an ever-constant struggle to make ends meet. He said very little as his actions were drama enough. He uncapped his fountain pen, carefully wrote a check to cover the cost of my failure, signed his name with a flourish, then turned the check face-down to blot the ink.

Instead of the typewriter, I became the owner of the remaining cans of salve. They did little to assuage my disillusionment and my writing career was cut short by the perils of the free enterprise system.

Jeanne Brinkman Grinnan, a native of Rochester, is retired from SUNY The College at Brockport where she taught writing and Children’s Literature. A lover of words, sentences, paragraphs, typefaces, and their possibilities, she is exploring, through personal narrative, the “geography” of growing up in a blue-collar, Catholic family in the 1950s and 60s.

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