Don't Bother Knocking

Regular viewers of "Andy Griffith Show" reruns are familiar with the term "Green River Ordinance" from the 1961 episode "Barney's Replacement." In that classic, inept Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife convinces himself that a young lawyer from the state government, sent down to Mayberry to function for a while as a deputy to gain law enforcement experience, is actually being groomed to replace him. So Barney quits in a huff and finds a job selling vacuum cleaners door to door. The new guy says he's willing to overlook the fact that Barney has no license to sell things door to door, in violation of the "Green River Ordinance," in light of Fife's connection to the Sheriff's Department. I won't spoil the story for you, in case you haven't seen it the first 13,963 times it's been shown on TV Land.

Guess what! There really was a Green River Ordinance! The Griffith show had the wrong date, but it was passed in 1931 in Green River, Wyoming, a town where a lot of the locals worked night shifts on railroads and did not care to be awakened during the daytime by some pesky peddler with a suitcase full of polishes or watches or can openers or whatever for sale. The town passed a law making it  illegal for any business to sell their items door-to-door without the express prior permission from the homeowners.  

There used to be such a thing as men (and later, women) going door-to-door selling for the Fuller Brush Company such items as hairbrushes, household cleaners and cosmetics. Their gimmick was to hand over some sort of little gift (a shoeshine cloth, or an orange peeler) to whoever answered the door as a way of ingratiating the salesperson to the would-be consumer.

Clearly, this ordinance would be bad for their business, which relied almost entirely on beating the pavements and knocking on doors for business. So Fuller Brush Company challenged the Ordinance on constitutional grounds in 1932.

And they lost! So technically, the Green River Ordinance is still on the books! Tell that to the next annoying sweaty person who knocks on your door this summer, hawking roof repairs, lifetime replacement windows, and better cable service.