One of the research team’s acquaintances reported that, early in his career, he sold coffins for a local coffin maker. He tried out several territories — one was in southern Illinois. “It’s always the same,” he said. “You walk up to a big white Victorian house in the middle of town. There’s an old guy sitting on a chair on the porch. Inside there’s a woman behind a reception desk, and a man standing waiting to greet you. The guy on the porch is the former owner, now retired, but still coming to work every day. The woman is his daughter, and the man, her husband. That’s pretty much the pattern.” “I was offered a territory in southern Illinois,” he said. “But what would I do? I don’t do agriculture and I don’t do bass fishing. I don’t know what I’d do in my spare time. And my wife — what would SHE do? She’d divorce me if I took a territory there.”