There was a sharp knock on the door at exactly 10:45. It was the first Sunday of the month, so we all knew who was standing behind the entrance. I ran and opened up the door, and there he was. In his arms were different knick-knacks; some t-shirts lay neatly in a box next to him. He was one of my grandmother’s old friends. Mimi always said that she knew him, but I never found out how they met. Even his name was only revealed to me once I was an adult, and that was just his nickname.
The Jewel Tea Man.
Jewel Tea Men were a common service when Mimi grew up in the 1940s. They would drive to each residence and deliver household goods to families as part of a subscription service. Yes, subscriptions somehow go back that far. The service started in 1901 and would deliver home goods and necessities to families located in the Chicago area. By the 1950s, the enterprise would expand into over 2,000 routes across 45 states, with some being in the New Jersey area. However, this success would eventually run out during the early 1980s, with Jewel Tea eventually selling the franchise to American Stores, Inc. in 1984. Only the most successful routes were taken over as owner-operated, and who knows where exactly those were.
There are a few problems with this, however, one being that the company ceased the majority of its delivery operations in the early 1980s; I wasn’t born until 2002. Also, the Jewel Tea company primarily operated in the Chicago area. Although there were some routes in New Jersey, they were primarily in urban areas near New York City and Philadelphia. Outside of a brief stint in South Florida, Mimi only ever lived in Asbury Park, a small beach town in southern New Jersey. To add insult to injury, the traditional service was mainly for grocery products, as mentioned before, our guy sold novelties primarily. So why did we call him the Jewel Tea Man?
After some deep thought, my mother eventually remembered his real name. “Oh yeah, Don Prater, or Prader, maybe Pratter,” she questioned. Okay, now we have a name, or three names in fact, which narrows my search down some more. Don would pull up to our condo in a tan unmarked van with no windows and would walk into our house with boxes of jewelry, kids' toys, and some cleaning supplies. Mimi would most often pick up Windex spray in a blue can, “the type that foams all over the place when you spray it,” my mother elaborated.
Don had been selling my family these items since my mother was a teenager in her childhood home in the late 1980s. Along with the items he had on his person, he would flash his catalog, in which you could call him for a more diverse selection of goods. Don eventually stopped coming by our house around 2010, a few years after Mimi was diagnosed with cancer. My mom also revealed that the term Jewel Tea Man served as just a nickname for Don; he likely operated solo. Perhaps the term was just a generic placeholder, as the service was popular earlier in Mimi’s life.
My mother said that Don passed away a few years ago, maybe—she still was not completely sure. With that “information,” my thoughts went right to obituaries; time to surf through thousands of them. I found nothing. Not even anyone with that name, or names, I should say. I even scrubbed through voter records throughout the state and found no one with his last name. Now I’m questioning my memories; is Don even this guy’s name? Did he really even exist? I continue my quest, searching through dozens of websites, trying to find anything even remotely related to Don.
No luck.
My search continues deeper, trying my best to go back in time using the Wayback Machine. Years ago, my older cousins were able to somehow find a website related to him, but now they can not recall exactly how they were able to find it. The Wayback Machine struggles for minutes at a time to even load a webpage, only further prolonging my hopes. My desires quickly crashed, however, with the majority of the sites loading into defunct porn pages, leaving me audibly gasping in my apartment. I realized my problem. I have no clue what Don’s job title would be—remember, he is not actually a Jewel Tea Man. If he were, my investigation would have concluded much earlier, or at least, I would have found some kind of information.
My mother and my aunt argued over the phone for nearly ten minutes about what Don’s job title would even be, after finally agreeing that he was a customer service sales representative. Great, how descriptive—it’s not like there are a million jobs with that name or anything. The search under that title was short, leading me to a slew of job listings for sales representatives in central New Jersey. I figured that wouldn’t get me anywhere.
The search for Don has now spanned about a week at this point, and it’s maddening that I could not find anything, not even a trace of him. I did have one final method to possibly find him, looking up any registered LLCs in New Jersey under his name, or names, I should say. Sure, maybe it feels a little bit invasive, but I wanted to find this guy by any means possible. My search starts, luckily, there’s an nj.gov website just for this. I messed around with different name combinations and filters, confidently believing that one of the sequences would lead me to something. After trying every last combo, however, I found nothing.
I gave up.
I honestly felt like I had to stop at this point. There simply was not enough information that my family knew about Don. All we really had was his name, kind of, and a vague description of what he did. It doesn’t help that I’m looking for a 20-year-old service—finding something that far back on the internet is nearly impossible. Everyone in my family tried to give me a description of him, and I really had no one else to talk to. Maybe that website my cousins found is out there somewhere, but simply lost in a sea of billions of web pages.
The memory of Don for me comes through merely in a blip. I can’t picture his face or what he would wear—perhaps I was more focused on the toys he would bring rather than what he looked like. I remember waking up on those Sunday mornings, wanting to stay under my SpongeBob-themed bed sheets as long as I could. The smell of Marlboro cigarettes would quickly fill up my 1,100 square foot childhood home, which meant the rest of my family was also awake.
My entire family smoked, at least in some capacity, when I was a kid. They all quit at the exact same time, the moment Mimi was diagnosed with lung cancer. I was four years old, and lived with her when she got sick, so I saw everything firsthand. That part, her going through the cancer, is engraved in my memory. My mother and I would spend hours alongside her hospital bed each day after school. I even saved her life once, at least I like to think. Mimi’s feeding tube was set to the wrong amount for hours, and I somehow noticed and changed the number back to normal.
Mimi would surely be able to tell me everything about Don. Ask her for one detail about someone, and she would pop out a life story. The little things always stood out to her; she probably still knew the guy’s phone number somehow. My mom mentioned how Mimi didn’t even really like Don’s products; she bought them because she felt bad for him. Sounds like something she would do. The funny thing is, Mimi probably gave me some sort of explanation about Don in the past. I know I’ve asked about him before. Maybe I just wasn’t listening?
I regret that now. After 15 years of staying strong in remission, Mimi’s cancer came back in 2022, and this time she could not fight it off.
If only I could ask her, have one more conversation with her, even if it was about Don, I would take that.