Peddlers, Privacy, and Street Noise

I am moving to blogspot from blog.com after some technical difficulties with posting and limits on uploads. At any rate, today, something got my attention. Perhaps for the first time in our neighborhood, I heard someone blow his horn. "Such an invasion of privacy," I thought, but soon I realized that hearing these noises was commonplace back in the motherland. In addition to the horns, in Iran, there were the peddlers and their portable microphones and amplifiers selling services and products ranging from exchanging salt for stale bread to giving your cotton bedding a make-over! Noise was a part of daily life in Iran, and it was to some extent amusing to sit on the balcony and in some way feel connected to life outside of home. Now in America, no one fixes your bedding, no one offers you melons at your doorstep, and worse yet, you have to throw away your stale bread and buy your own salt!

Below, you may find a picture of the cart of a beet seller: