A door-to-door salesman does not bother me. I have not seen one stroll through the neighborhood with a briefcase in hand in years. Where did they go? Did they all crash their cars?

I'm sure they did not all sleep with our wives. I'm confident that they did earn money - not enough to support a family and the youngest son's stoned friend that raids the fridge for Jell-o chocolate vanilla swirl cups.

Salesmen - shoe, hat, radio - are different than the man that runs the general store in a white apron with dirt in the wrinkled hemmed edges or the man lifted behind the counter in the back of the pharmacy.

All these things are of a small town where large wood cutouts of logos are nailed to the right of a businesses name on brick buildings.

Commerce has changed. I'm not talking Wal-mart or malls. I'm reaching to a western world before downtown. Main street, just before they paved it.

This America was fleeting, brief. It ended before it was written into any book. No wonder Lowman killed himself in 1949. That life ended. The American dream was already in the past.

As I work this out, I discovered it. The American dream is not in a suburban driveway. It is in the dirt main street. Just off the railroad track, a hotel with a brothel and a bar. I can't decide if the door is half glass or wild-west swinging wood doors.