In a previous post I made mention of the "honey dipper" that would drive the alleys in the neighborhood and offer to clean out your grease trap, but there were others too. In the '50's when we lived at 25th & Washtenaw we had a man with a horse drawn wagon and his call was "Rags and old iron!", and as the junk man he'd take anything he perceived to be of value. Today that profession is done with a pick up truck; one can get quite a bit in a truck and I'm thinking it might be tax free income. Then there was the vegetable man. Ours was Italian and he would come by a couple times a week with good, fresh stuff. Today it's Peapod, delivered right to your door. In the months when the weather was decent there was a guy that drove around and sold popcorn and some sort of large wafer, 8-9" diameter and he would put honey on it and then another wafer, making a sandwich. Sounds a little goofy, but hey, it was a different time.
Later on we moved to 54th & Rutherford and even up to '59 or '60 there was a vacuum cleaner salesman that came every Spring. What was unusual about him was his car. He drove a Franklin, those had an air-cooled engine and I think they stopped making Franklins in the early '30's. That guy was VERY old but he was still out there pounding the pavement. Naturally there was the Good Humor man. Those guys were young, probably a college guy, and I recall that they seemed clean cut, like maybe standards were high to get the job. If you weren't too much of a PITA he might even give you a short ride and let you ring the bells. The bells were great, unlike that horrible music i/c trucks play today. Lastly I remember the knife man. He pushed a red and green cart with a bell that went "ding-dong" to announce his arrival. Sharpen ma's knives or scissors? Repair an umbrella? That was your guy. Last one I saw in Chicago was about 1979.
So who did I miss? Surely someone here remembers somebody else.