Scot enjoys his Spokane adventure
Richard Lennon wanted to see America on the cheap. The headhunters visiting his university in Scotland were looking for foreigners to sell books door to door in far-flung places like Spokane.
He could make $118 a day, they said. Up to $2,900 a week, they said, provided he put in 12.5 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. It all sounded good to 19-year-old Lennon, until he found himself standing on an old woman’s porch on Spokane’s North Side, asking if she wouldn’t mind letting him stay in her basement for the summer.
Going door to door for accommodations was a character-building exercise recommended by the company.
“What a ridiculous idea,” the old woman said, with a few salty remarks thrown in for good measure.
“She basically said we were very stupid, very naïve and said to call the cops,” Lennon said.
He insists the book job wasn’t a fraudulent deal, just a very tough one. The books were sold for Southwest Company, a Tennessee business started more than 100 years ago as a door-to-door Bible business. The company now sells tutorial books using the same combination of sweat and shoe leather. One in three salesmen quits, though quitting six time zones away from home is not easy.
Maybe you’ve seen Lennon this summer, or someone like him, lugging a heavy bag of books door to door in the 90-degree heat. There were several kids, mostly foreign students from English-speaking countries selling books door to door this summer.
Maybe you offered to pepper his hind end with buckshot if he didn’t get off your porch immediately. Or maybe you showed him Spokane’s good side.
Lennon leaves Spokane en route to Scotland this Wednesday, having seen the best and worst the community has to offer.
A complete stranger gave him a bicycle so he’d have a way to get around town. Another stranger stole the wheels and seat from the bike, after Lennon left it locked to a pole while he sold books.
A hypnotist profiled his character. A new friend lent him a cellular telephone for the duration of his Spokane stay. An older, conservative woman lectured Lennon on the importance of gun rights and recommended he arm himself so he could protect his country. The best Spokanites were talkers, and Lennon obliged them all.
“I’m not big-headed,” Lennon said trying to explain his uncountable chats with locals. “But it’s not every day you have a Scotsman at your front door.”
A family on Euclid offered him a place to stay. Rhonda Yeado said she and her husband, Jeff, took Lennon in without really knowing why they did. It wasn’t like them. Now Yeado is sad that the person who changed her whole summer in ways she wouldn’t have imagined is leaving. It is amazing how much saying yes to one stranger can change a person’s life.
“I hate to see him leave, but his mother said I have to send him back,” said Yeado, whose own son is the same age as Lennon. “It’s nice to hear my name with a Scottish accent.”
And when Lennon finally decided he’d worked his last 85-hour week, a woman he’d met only weeks earlier took him out to Jaremko Nissan/Saab in Spokane Valley, where the general sales manager, against his own character, gave Lennon a job immediately as a lot attendant, someone who washes cars and rotates the stock.
“I don’t hire people on the spot, but I hired him just after visiting with him for a short time,” said John Wood, Jaremko general sales manager. “The kid was never late. He never complained. He was out on the blacktop with us when it was 100 degrees outside and on the blacktop it’s probably 117 to 120 degrees. He was so appreciative. You’d have thought when I hired him he was walking on air.”
Lennon left his job with Jaremko last week. The book sales he made during the first five weeks of summer were based on deliveries to be made at summer’s end. The books arrived this week and he wanted to deliver them personally.
“For the most part, I met some fantastic people of every race, every color,” Lennon said. “I met a fantastic family. I will come back.”