Selling Mistletoe Door to Door
Childhood
Transcript only — no recording for this segment.
Tom: The point of shooting a mistletoe in the first place is to get it down and go house to house and sell them. Back then mistletoe was a part of Christmas — you hang it over a door, and anybody walks under it you’re supposed to kiss them. What I’d do is get the mistletoe and go from door to door and sell them. If you shoot it with a .22 you try to hit it right at the tree trunk, where it falls all together.
That’s where you had a good way of getting Christmas money. More than good sales, you had to have good mistletoe.
That’s the only way I could get any money — I didn’t have an allowance. If you grow up in a family with seven kids, you got to do something. [chuckles]