Our anonymous salesman takes a look back on the life of a dyed-in-the-wool sales guy who put family above financial gain:

Recently, my wife's grandfather passed away. He was a great man, and a true gentleman in every sense of the word. As the patriarch of a large Italian family, Santo fathered five children, had nine grandchildren, and a few dozen great-grandchildren. They were all at my mother-in-law Vera's* house after the funeral, eating trays of mediocre eggplant parmiagiana (a sad reminder of how good his wife Vera's legendary cooking was) and trying not to cry. At 88 years old, Santo* lived a great life. "What a run," everyone was saying, and it was true. The 30-odd family members gathered at the house -- a veritable football team of direct descendants and in-laws were Santo's living legacy. I kept thinking how amazing it was that he had created this.

Santo was a salesman, by the way. He owned his own sewing machine company, and he sold industrial sewing equipment to the factories in New York. He always referred to them as "machines." He would be telling a story about some guy he knew back in the 60's, and I would ask him how he knew the guy. "I used to sell him machines," he would say. Somehow, that explained everything.

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