Around Cohoes
They talked about aluminum siding as a technique for making old houses look new again. From a distance, these sheets, which never needed painting, looked like freshly painted wood . . .
“If you’re in aluminum storm windows,” the driver said to Trout, “you must be in aluminum siding, too.” All over the country, the two businesses went hand-in-hand.
“My company sells it,” said Trout, “and I’ve seen a lot of it. I’ve never actually worked on an installation.”
The driver was thinking seriously of buying aluminum siding for his home in Little Rock, and he begged Trout to give him an honest answer to this question: “From what you’ve seen and heard — the people who get aluminum siding, are they happy with what they get?”
“Around Cohoes,” said Trout, “I think those were about the only really happy people I ever saw.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Breakfast of Champions
