Feeling a Little Ron Popeil

When my siblings and I were young, our parents used to pry us out of bed on Sunday mornings and together we’d pile sleepy-eyed (and some of us with morning breath still on our lips) into my dad’s maroon Chevrolet Lumina seven passenger van.  As we drove toward Saint Mary’s Church of Albany, my mother would flip through her Sunday sale sheets, my sister Meghan would read the comics, and I would sit in the back wishing away the coming hour and dreaming of being back home, out of my stockinged feet and back into my sweats, and cuddled under the couch with a bowl of “Oodles of Noodles” in my lap and Ron Popeil’s theatrical voice blasting from the living room TV.  I can’t say where the habit originated from, but there was a phase in our lives, well before cable graced the Holligan household when, after the closing credits of Mommy’s Family rolled across the screen, the only thing to watch on Sunday afternoon television was Ron Popeil’s infamous infomercials of his Ronco © Product line.  I don’t recall them actually being enthralling, but somehow with the knowledge that our designated “house room” required cleaning, my brother Adam and I would easily get reeled into an hour or more of Ron’s cyclical schtick about any one of his notorious Ronco Products: The Dial-o-Matic Vegetable Slicer; the Chop-o-Matic Mincer; the Solid Flavor Injector, which enables you to make food that “comes out so beautifully, you won’t believe you made it yourself”; or the 5 Tray Electric Food Dehydrator.

Any person who has ever wiled away more than fifteen minutes of his life watching one of these infomercials recognizes they're a genre all their own.  The cheesy one liners; the over enthusiastic, exaggeratedly animated “friends” who spontaneously pop onto set to sample Ron’s creations; the “all time low price” that flashes across the screen; the justification that everyone can afford said product due to the three month easy payment plan; the plea to “call now for this one time offer"; the live audience viewers who ooooh and ahhhh and wow at each new fascinating perk the product has to offer.  All facets sucked us in so powerfully that not even my mother asking us to lift our feet as she vacuumed around us and intermittently blocked our view of the TV could distract us from melting into Ron’s coercive spiel.

Two months ago, while our running errands for the house, I casually passed an end-cap display of roughly thirty 5 Tray Electric Food Dehydrators and I stopped dead in my tracks.  My eyes glassed over as they had as I sat before the TV on those Sunday afternoons, and I knew that I would be taking one home with me.  My intentions were true:  furnish Martyn with a “sensible” Valentine’s Day gift that would offer us “endless hours of fun in the kitchen”, as well as some healthy, snacky treats to bring along on camping trips and summer hikes.  However, as the box slid over the barcode scanner and the satisfying “beep” of purchase entry met my ears, I couldn’t help but feel giddy that for only $24.99, yes $24.99, ladies and gentlemen, the 5 Tray Electric Food Dehydrator was mine for just one easy payment.

 

MARTY BLANCHING THE MANGO

THANKS, RON!