VeggieTales Nostalgia

My Week #45 Submission

I must admit that when Dr. Jennifer Haddock first mentioned that her song choice was a VeggieTale number, I was like… hmmm🤔. But then I clicked on the link, and with Larry the Cucumber came a flood of memories.

My Sweetheart and I spent the rest of the evening reminiscing of years long gone by.

VeggieTales were the very first books my eldest daughter had. I can remember seeing the smile the young man was wearing as I answered the knock at the door of our tiny little singlewide trailer.

It was hot, probably about this time of year — the kid had beads of sweat on his forehead. My Sweetheart and I couldn’t have been married for a year yet. Not long born, our little girl wasn’t near old enough to read. Gosh, that feels like a lifetime ago. And I guess it was — we just celebrated her 27th birthday last week! 🙏 What a blessing.

It was late afternoon, early evening when the young man arrived. He had a book in his hand and was wearing a heavily laden bookbag over his shoulder. I didn’t see his car at first, then noticed it parked at the gate down at the end of the driveway as he gave me his spiel.

“Damn son, come on in outta this heat,” I interrupted. “You can explain all that in the air conditioning, can’t ya?”

“Yes sir, thanks,” he replied as he followed me in off of the front porch.

Our little singlewide sat about an eighth of a mile off the road. It wasn’t fenced, but I had a gate across the driveway right beside a wooded patch that gave us some privacy. We didn’t have any kind of kid stuff in the yard, either. Most folks probably wouldn’t have liked the fact that he’d come around the gate, but I was impressed by the kid’s audacity. Or was it hunger?

I’ve worked as a door to door salesman. So I know what it’s like to knock on hundreds of doors in a day for little to no pay. Sometimes people are nasty, most times not. But rarely do you actually get inside the house. It’s a grueling job, working door to door sales for commission ain’t for sissies.

Anyway, I showed the kid to the kitchen table. And he started to unpack his gear as my Sweetheart fixed him a glass of sweet iced tea. Which he immediately drained. She refilled his glass tumbler and took a seat beside me. I don’t remember where our baby girl was. She is curiously absent from this memory.

So he starts his spiel over. He’s selling children’s books, specifically, VeggieTales books. Led by Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, VeggieTales are animated talking and singing vegetables. They sang and told christian faith based songs and stories. We’d never heard of the talking vegetables before, and my sweetheart and I immediately fell in love with them.

Of course we were initially disappointed when he told us how much the book series cost. We could never afford that. But then he not only dropped the price in half — because he liked us, duh — but he also said that we could pay off the $200 some odd dollar balance over the next two years, at just $12 per month.

SOLD.

The young man admitted later that we’d been his first sale. He was attending college locally, and trying to earn some extra cash selling door to door in the evenings after class. But he hadn’t had much luck, and was just about to give it up altogether when he’d turned onto our road. Dude said he’d decided to try the very next house he saw.

If he sold any books, he’d keep at it.

And if he’d gotten another door slammed in his face, he was done.

That very next house had been ours. He’d walked around a gate to get to it. And all three of us were all smiles as he walked back around it and waved goodbye.

That kid is probably an engineer or something now, married and has a family of his own. I wonder if his children grew up listening to VeggieTales stories at bedtime too?

I asked the girls if they remember VeggieTales and they did. They even reminded me that we once took them to a VeggieTales movie at the theater, which I vaguely remember.

Twenty seven years ago — wow, it’s crazy. Thank you Jennifer, for choosing this prompt. The memories it’s evoked have brought my Sweetheart and I great joy this week.

And Mr. Salesman, if you’re out there, I hope you’re having a wonderful life. 🙏 Thank you.

Here’s the title photo for my submission, created using ChatGPT.

Calling all Poets, Fiction, & Non-Fiction writers that love music — Share your prose of 1500 words or less, using the prompt, The Water Buffalo Song!

Do you know a reader or writer that’d be perfect for this prompt? Share it with them!

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