Here's my story of being a Grit salesman wannabe, along with a Grit ad from a 1963 Boys' Life magazine:

http://tulsatvmemories.com/pop.html

I remember always seeing ads for Grit but I had no idea what it actually was. I guessed it was like a Readers' Digest-type pub.

I sold Grits as a Kid back in the 70s! I was a terrible salesman but I loved looking at all the prizes I could win. I think I finally got the real working printing press I always wanted.

My brother sold them in the '60s in Mulvane, KS.

He picked up quite a bit of pocket change, if I remember correctly.

Several of my friends sold Grit back in the 70's. I never was a legitimate salesman but helped out my buds sell them at the local grocery stores. My recollection of the Grit magazine was more like a current tabloid but with more down-home articles rather than celebrity trash. You didn't get rich selling the newspaper but you could earn some interesting prizes. Maybe we need more things like this to keep the current teens busy and out of trouble!

Do people still go door to door selling Grit newspapers? Thanks

I do remember the Grit newspaper. My dad used to bring it home every Sunday. Mom and us boys went to church and he went to the hardware store to catch up with his friends. He always brought home a copy and I would spend the afternoon reviewing its every page. Does any one remember the bald headed boy in the comics? He had a dog as I recall. I can not remember his name.

I sold the grit newspaper in Antioch Tennessee in 1956.
There were 11 faithful customers on my route and I made 44 cents every Saturday.As cokes were 5 cents as well as candybars,44 cents would last a while.The movie was 14 cents as well.

I sold grit in the early seventies in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My favorite locations to sell were Pruett's Food Town, a local grocery store, the Krystal restaurant, a popular hamburger drive in, similar to White Castle to northerners and in Kmart parking lots. When I first started selling the tabloid, I was very motivated and ambitious, hoping to earn lots of money and win some of those great prizes. After two or maybe three months my enthusiasm had waned with the realization that every person who walked by was not interested in buying what I was selling. The rejection was a depressing slap in the face to a naive young salesman. From that point on my mother had to force me to get out and pound the pavement to sell my 90 copies each month. I eventually understood that rejection was part of the sales game. I also employed my younger brother to share in my profits, prizes and misery. We would always start out selling at the Krystal drive-in hamburger joint and would go in and order a burger and a coke as soon as we had sold enough papers to pay for it. Basically we were eating our profits in advance. Next it was on to the grocery store where we would stand at the door and bark our sells pitch- "would you like to buy a Grit"- to each shopper entering or leaving the store. Persistence finally paid off for us, as our mother forced us to sweat it out until all copies were sold, customers began to expect us to be there and sales improved. Another good location was the Kmart parking lot where we targeted men waiting in the car while their wives did some shopping. Their boredom was our profit. Although we never got rich, we did learn some valuable lessons about running a business and about life in general. I was not a great salesman and neither was my brother, but I would not trade those weekends we spent together. Two squirrels just trying to get a nut or in our case a hamburger and a Coke.

I sold Grit newspapers from 1962 to 1966 in Abilene, Texas, and the business lessons I learned in that little business have proved valuable to me ever since. The papers then cost $.15 each, and my profit was $.05 each. It was lucrative for me, and I had 33 repeat door to door customers each week; however, if I knew then what I know now, I would have been a little more aggressive about getting customers!:-)