Every Tuesday afternoon in 1990, the Watkins man pulled in to my parents’ driveway in his brown car. And every Tuesday afternoon, we had to decide if we would hide. Mom loved his ground black pepper, but she bristled at the inconvenience of actually having to order it. He was a friendly man but he persisted in long and involved sales visits, even if we were standing there in our swimsuits.
We had a version of the Watkins man (or maybe it was an actual Watkins man - I was really young I don't remember😀) when we lived in Detroit.