| By Bob Weaver
Door-to-door scamming has mostly been replaced by 21st Century technology, coming around to prey on the unsuspecting.
It was in the early 1950s when Grandma McCoy was home alone in the Village of Hur, went to her crank-up telephone and rang the long and two-shorts. Being on summer school break, I answered.
"There's a guy here who won't leave until I give him some money for a magazine," she said, in a broken and tearful voice.
Grandma's house was just down the road, and a traveling foot salesman had been invited in, after which he began his pitch to sell magazine subscriptions.
Being 12-years-old and ten feet tall, I ran to her house with a garden hoe to run him away, after all, no one is going to intimidate my grandma.
Coming down the hill, I saw the young man running from the McCoy house down the dusty road. I sped up yelling invectives, chasing him down the Hur hill.
The magazine guy, likely fearful of a person with a garden hoe, managed to jump into the woods and hide, escaping his fate.
I returned to grandma's house, to find the elderly woman shaken and upset.
She had advised the young salesman she did not want magazine subscriptions, after when he told he she must go and get her pocketbook and shell out some cash anyway.
I spent the rest of the afternoon with grandma stringing beans, imbued with my courage to come to her rescue, saving her from such a dastardly scammer, those many years ago.
Excuse me, I have to answer the phone, a local number high-jacked by a scammer.
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