Just two weeks ago at about 8 p.m., I was startled when someone pounded on the front entry of my residence Were my nice neighbors encountering some kind of problem? Did some young child need a place of refuge?

When I opened the front door, I was confronted by a rather aggressive salesman wanting to sell me some version of a home security program or system. This jerk insisted I was living in a very dangerous city. I nicely told him I wasn’t interested in whatever he had for sale and closed the door.

It had been a long time since a door-to-door salesperson had tried to sell me some unwanted product, service or magazine subscription. This unexpected visit reminded me of the past years when there were all too many of these unwanted visitors.

Several days later, one of my associates here at the Tribune, who lives about three streets to the west told me about a strange encounter she had with a young woman that same evening who tried to sell her a home security system. This sounded all too similar to the encounter I had with the pesky salesman. I quickly came to the opinion that a a sales crew from somewhere else had been dumped off in our part of the city that evening.

These two incidents reminded me of something from the past called the Green River Law, or what Wikipedia calls an ordinance. Here’s Wikipedia’s explanation of this part of American life.

“The name Green River Ordinance is given to a common American city ordinance prohibiting door-to-door solicitation. Under such an ordinance, it is illegal for any business to sell their items door-to-door without express permission from the household beforehand. Some versions prohibit all organizations, including non-profit charitable, political, and religious groups, from soliciting or canvassing any household that makes it clear in writing, that it does not want such solicitations (generally with a ‘No Trespassing’ or ‘No Solicitations’ sign posted).

“The ordinance is named for the city of Green River, Wyo., the first city to enact it.”

I’m sure Albert Lea once had this type of legal restraint for those traveling door-to-door sales jerks. I’m still doing some research on this topic.

In the past many communities really enforced this law or ordinance to control those unwanted door-to-door sales people. Part of this was based on protecting local businesses and to also eliminate illegal sales activities.

However, during the past several decades the door-to-door sales system has declined somewhat and been replaced with unwanted telephone sales campaigns, e-mail trash and junk mail. Thankfully, one can hang up the telephone, delete the unwanted e-mail and recycle the junk mail.

Yet, there are still a few door-to-door folks ringing the door bell or pounding on the front entry of my home. They’re representing some local church group or a local business looking for prospective customers and/or sales. These are folks I can tolerate.

There’s one of those door knockers I still remember. He was an Albert Lea High School student who was selling the Tiger Pride Discount Card several years ago. I purchased one of these cards and soon paid for it with the bargain deals available from several local supporting firms. Since that time I’ve made it a special point to purchase one of these cards each fall to help support the Tiger football team.

Now here’s a special request for our fine readers. Does someone have one or more copies of the Southern Minnesota News? This really obscure weekly newspaper was issued by Trades Publishing Co. during World War II. The only copy at the museum is Vol. 1, No. 11, dated June 4, 1942.

Please give me a call or bring whatever copies are available to the Tribune and let’s see what evolves.

Ed Shannon’s column has been appearing in the Tribune every Friday since December 1984.