<\/p>\n
Maggies were linoleum salesmen\/hustlers <\/strong><\/span>in Cleveland.<\/p>\n Harvey Pekar wrote a comic strip about them several decades ago.\u00a0 I didn’t hear the word maggies <\/em>again until last week, when my cousin Danny Seiger, 78, expounded at shabbes<\/em> dinner on the maggies of Kinsman Road.\u00a0 At first I had no idea what Danny was talking about. Neither did my wife.\u00a0 She said, “Magistrates?”\u00a0 And I said, “Magi?”\u00a0 (I hadn’t remembered the Pekar comic strip.)<\/p>\n “Magi!” Danny laughed.\u00a0 “Magi?\u00a0 That would be Yoshke’s boys!” [Jesus’ boys.]<\/p>\n “The maggies carried thick samples of linoleum that looked like Venetian marble,” Danny said. “They sold nine-by-twelve sheets for fifteen dollars.\u00a0 Nobody had fifteen dollars back then, so the maggies took five bucks on installment, and came back with a roll of tissue-paper.\u00a0 They could carry it upstairs real easy.\u00a0 It weighed three pounds.\u00a0 The maggies laid the tissue-paper linoleum on your kitchen floor, collected the five bucks, and never came back.”<\/p>\n Danny grew up<\/strong><\/span> in his parents’ deli, Seiger’s Restaurant on Kinsman Road, and knew something about conmen, kibitzers<\/em>, bookies, contractors and maggies.\u00a0 It was like an Eskimo knowing about snow.\u00a0 \u00a0[Kibitzers<\/em> are meddlesome observers.]<\/p>\n The maggies sold more than linoleum, Danny said.\u00a0 They sold ties at barbershops, socks at saloons. \u00a0Each maggie had a territory and a product line. “One maggie stood by the streetcar stop and ran up to women with nice lemons,” Danny said. “The maggie held up a few lemons and said, ‘Two for a nickel, three for a dime.’ The woman gave him the dime and hopped on the streetcar.”<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n