In a flipped version of the front door back door culture, my  
grandfather broke the rules to feed his family which lived deep on the  
south side of Chicago.

Wally (we called him) was a junker-salvager-fixer upper and an  
operator.  He and his kids gleaned broken appliances from the trash.   
His repaired pieces were hot items during WWII w metal and factories  
diverted to the war effort, as you know. On the Gold Coast in Chicago  
he had cash customers.

Trucks were allowed only in the alleys in swank-town.  If Wally  
knocked on the only doors he could access-- back doors-- he'd get  
turned away by low-ranking servants. He got to the front doors by  
making a truck out of a beater Cadillac sedan-- removed rear part of  
the compartment. Thus he had a legal rig for hauling on the street.  
There he'd get to the front door and the top servants who had power to  
buy Wally's stuff.

So, along with bill collectors and religious propagandizers, plain  
follk know how to read the landscape and when to use the front or back  
door.

Wally was the most interesting person in the whole huge family. Darn,  
I miss the old curmudgeon.

Mary





====================
Mary Tegel
hands on impresario
intern in architecture
Tegel Design + Planning
====================

On Jun 22, 2010, at 9:30 PM, deb bledsoe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> People in private houses in Jersey often seem to enter and exit  
>> their homes from the back door rather than the front door.   
>> "Company" almost always uses the front door.
>>
>
>
> This is the way it's done in KY - if someone's at the front door  
> it's a bill collector or some religious group.
> ~deb
>
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