“Likable, but not exceptional.”  That’s what Edwin Black’s third grade teacher wrote on his report card.  Kind of an odd observation, Edwin thought to himself when he read it after his mother had left it lying on the kitchen table.  But, his teacher was one with a fairly vast level of experience, so both Edwin and his mother took her at her word.  His mother took it in stride, but Edwin saw it as a challenge.  

“Maybe,” he thought, “I could turn the likable parts into something exceptional with enough effort.  And he set out to do just that.

Nobody even knew him as ‘Edwin’.  Everybody had called him ‘Pitch’ ever since he could remember.  That was the only name he’d ever known, his uncle on his mother’s side calling him that as a toddler, making a play on words with his last name.  His mother’s brother had never cared much for Edwin’s father, so it was just one more way to get under his skin.  But the name stuck and he was forever known after that as ‘Pitch’ Black.

Turns out, it was the perfect name for someone in the sales game.  “I’m always making a pitch!” he used to say.  “And nobody’s going to forget who to call when they need to place an order.”  It served him well.

So did his 1950 Plymouth DeLuxe Business Coupe.

Earning the right to represent Acme Home and Agriculture Products throughout the Oklahoma / West Texas Sales Region, Pitch considered the Plymouth an extension of himself, and himself an extension of the company he worked for. The back end of the Plymouth swallowed up the samples and catalogs that were the tools of his trade. The glove compartment carried his well worn copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie helped Pitch feel like he was closer to being exceptional. Certainly closer than he had been in third grade.

His schedule of travel had him and the Plymouth on the road 50 weeks a year, Monday thru Friday.  The two weeks he had off every year would be split, one in the spring and one in the fall.  In the spring he’d go visit relatives.  In the fall, he’d stay at home and relax.  Well, as much as he knew how to relax, anyway.  Home was a 1946 Spartan Manor Model 25 trailer he’d bought, used and kept parked at the Pleasant Hill Trailer Park outside Odessa.

He got a good deal on the Spartan, and it made a lot more sense than throwing money away on rent for someplace he was away from more than he was home. When he was younger, he’d thought that he might move into management one day, settle down in Topeka, the Home Office, maybe get married and buy a house. A real one. But as the years after the war piled up and he saw other salesmen get their crack at the management gig and he stayed one the road, he figured he’d be in the Spartan for the long haul. “I may hitch it up and pull it to Florida, if that territory opens up someday,” he told Rusty at the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store one Friday afternoon when he was writing up an order of Acme Bird Feeders and Buckshot. “We’ll just have to see.”

The Plymouth he drove and the Spartan he called ‘home’ on the weekends were both utilitarian. They each served their purpose. He made use of both, but knew neither were exceptional. Most other folks did as well, and that’s just as well.

Pitch never really dated. “Marriage isn’t fair to someone whose life is on the road,” he told Trixie over at the Klip-N-Dye when he was showing her a new line of Acme Klipper-Matics that had attachments for both ladies and livestock. “Maybe someday, when I move to Florida.” He always finished each sales call with a traveling salesman joke. Nothing risqué, of course. Just sort of a tale to make them chuckle. Dale Carnegie wrote that it was always best to leave a customer with a smile on their face; that’s how they’d remember you. Or it might have been Mr. Tillman, Regional Sales Manager for Southern States, who told him that.

Thom Tillman had actually started with Acme a year after Pitch, but had found the road to Topeka a lot easier to navigate than Pitch had. Thom became VP while Pitch was still on the road. In the report he filed every year after spending two days in the territory visiting customers with Pitch, Mr. Tillman would note on the evaluation form completed and mailed into the personnel office, “likable, but not exceptional”. In 1953 Mr. Tillman was hired away from Acme by their biggest competitor, Nationwide Industrial Home Brands, to be their new General Manager.

Pitch thought that might be his opportunity, too.  Either to move up into Mr. Tillman’s slot, or to maybe get a call from Mr. Tillman to go work for him at Nationwide Brands.  When a year went by and Phil Dixon from the Rocky Mountain States Region got the VP position and he never heard from Mr. Tillman, Pitch fought off the disappointment.  He told Agnes, his neighbor at Pleasant Hill Trailer Park, “He’s probably waiting to get settled in.  Nobody comes in and starts making sweeping changes on Day One.”  Agnes nodded along in agreement and poured them each another Scotch into the jelly glasses on the dinette.

Agnes was a widow.  She hadn’t been when Pitch moved the Spartan in next to her and her husband, Arn.  A couple years after that, Arn came down with the cancer.  It started in his prostate, but by the time they found it, it had spread everywhere and he was gone within just a few months.  Pitch missed the funeral because he was in Topeka for the Annual Sales Meeting, but he sent flowers and a set of new Acme Steak Knives, the ones with the lifetime guarantee that they never had to be sharpened.

A year or two after that, Agnes was at Pitch’s Spartan early one Saturday evening. They’d been talking and sharing a few laughs. Neither had laughed much lately. Pitch suggested they go to the Candlelight Inn for a charcoal steak. “Might be nice to share a meal together,” he told her. It did sound nice and she grabbed a coat from her trailer next door and they got in the Plymouth and headed towards the Candlelight.

The steaks were good, the lighting was low.  Pitch and Agnes each had a few cocktails.  It was the first time Agnes had really been out since Arn’s passing.  While Pitch was used to eating most of his meals out because of all his time on the road, the experience of having someone on the other side of the table while he ate was an unusual treat.

When they got back to Pleasant Hill, he said, “The name of this place is kind of funny. It’s not really all that pleasant, and there isn’t a hill in sight!” Agnes laughed. Pitch thought about Dale Carnegie as he opened the passenger door of the Plymouth. “Want to come in for a nightcap?”

She’d been hoping he’d ask. While he took off his tie, Agnes got the jelly glasses and the Scotch out. The nightcap started out in the dinette and ended in the back of the Spartan in an awkward display of something that fell short of passion, but exceeded friendship. The next morning, as Agnes contemplated how to get back to her trailer from his, she noted that Pitch was likable, but certainly not exceptional, not really even meeting the low bar that Arn had set. After that, Agnes and Pitch only saw each other when they ran into one another at the washateria. They’d smile uncomfortably in the only way that people can who have seen each other naked once.

By 1954, Pitch was looking to trade-in the Plymouth.  Late  one Friday afternoon he stopped by Tumbleweed Plymouth / Dodge / Desoto in Fort Stockton to look at the new models and get some pricing.  “Masterpieces of Value,” the brochure called them.  The Plaza Business Coupe looked mighty sleek.  “We don’t keep any of the Business Coupes in stock,” the salesman told him.  “That’s a pretty specialized model.  Don’t sell a lot.  But we could surely order you one.  Ten percent down would get the deal done.  I’m afraid there won’t be much for a trade-in on your ’50 model.  Low demand.  A lot of miles.  Might want to sell it yourself.”

“I’ve got a neighbor I might just give it to.  She doesn’t have a car,” Pitch said.  “The old thing still has a few miles left in her.”  The salesman wasn’t sure if Pitch was talking about the neighbor or the ’50 Plymouth.  “Let me see what she says, and I’ll stop back by on my next trip through Fort Stockton.”

An hour later he was home, going through the stack of mail at the dinette in the Spartan.  There was a letter from the Corporate Office in Topeka.  Signed by Mr. Dixon himself.  Maybe this was the offer of a promotion that he’d been waiting for all this time.  Pitch was glad he hadn’t made a deal on a new business coupe.  A manager would be more inclined to drive a Belvedere Sport Coupe.  Maybe even the convertible model.  Could even be enough of a raise to justify the move up to a Dodge.  He set the letter down on the Formica table top so he could pour a Scotch and take off his tie.  He wanted to be relaxed and able to focus on the individual details contained in the corporate correspondence.

“As you know,” it started, “we have been working on a new state-of-the-art ordering system that will rival that of any of our competitors.  This system will allow our valued customers to see our complete variety of products directly through catalogs mailed out quarterly and phone their orders directly to Product Fulfillment Warehouse in Topeka …”  The remainder of the letter would have made Dale Carnegie weep.  

Pitch gathered up his dirty clothes and headed to the washateria, hoping he might run into Agnes. It seemed that, for Pitch Black, the future was growing darker.