Meet 'G.I. Joe,' Chicago's Legendary Traveling Sausage Salesman

CHICAGO – Even after 40-something years hawking encased meats at dive bars, G.I. Joe the Sausage Guy still knows how to make an entrance.

On a recent Tuesday, the gregarious traveling meat salesman stepped out of his customized Dodge Ram wearing a body-length white butcher’s coat. He gathered dozens of encased meats, cheeses and sauces from a refrigerated box in the truck bed and popped inside O’Donnell’s, a friendly Northwest Side tap.

O'Donnell's owner, John Zuhr, instantly recognized G.I. Joe, whose given name is Joshua Perl.

“Anytime he wants to stop by is fine,” Zuhr said of the last of a dying breed of independent pitchmen making a buck catering to hungry late-night drinkers.

Perl, 60, pulled out a 9-inch carving knife and sliced up samples of Hungarian salami and beef summer sausage, then served them up with a side dish of tales from his life on the road to share with the Tuesday-night crowd.

Ed Martinez, an O’Donnell’s regular, remembers Perl from the days his mom dragged him to taverns as a kid. “He gets around,” Martinez said. “He’s not a shy guy.”

Back in the day, beautiful women threw themselves at Perl, who stands a lean 6-foot-3-inches tall and carries 250 pounds. “Sometimes a bartender decides she wants you,” he said. “You do what you have to do.”

Perl says he’s fathered “15-20” children with five women. It’s the reason he’s still making sales calls to taverns into the wee hours.

“I have a big family, a lot of kids and a lot of crazy mothers I have to deal with,” he said.

For that, Perl says he doesn’t take up as many bartenders who offer free drinks on work days as he used to, and says he’s given up chasing women. Well, sort of.

“If a beautiful woman comes after me, that’s fair game,” he said. “I’m currently in an open relationship.”

Maybe it goes without saying, but Perl’s longest lasting relationship has been with bratwurst, kielbasa and spicy pepperoni.

“I’ve always been doing sausage,” Perl said.

He started working in the family business, Perl Sausage Company, when he was in grade school. At 8 years old, he prepared sausage casings, unloaded trucks and stocked freezers. In high school, his father, Karl Perl, the “happy sausage guy,” taught him how to call on customers at bars, car dealerships and steel mills.

Perl and his brother would skip school on Fridays to get a sausage-hawking education while helping their dad sell to hungry shift-workers that packed shot-and-a-beer joints on payday.

“I took a little detour when I joined the military. Me and my father were bumping heads and there were things going on. My mom said, ‘You want to fight?’ She took me right down to the recruiter. I got signed up. It took about a day. My bags were packed and I was ready to go. I was 17.”

Those five years of active duty earned Perl the nickname “G.I. Joe” when he resumed his sausage-selling career.

Perl’s proud to carry on his father’s legacy, hitting the streets with his sausage-filled refrigerator six nights a week until the 4 a.m. bars close.

“My father was a big, tough, likable guy,” he said. “He was famous. I became even more famous.”

The self-proclaimed “king of the streets” doesn’t miss any opportunity to embellish his legacy.

Perl’s brother, Barron Perl, who owns Deli Direct cheese shop and gourmet foods in Lake Zurich, said sometimes even he has trouble discerning truth from fiction. Barron Perl said he can't be sure if his brother actually has 15-or-so children.

“If he has that many kids, maybe that’s why he’s working so much,” Barron Perl said. “Even if his stories are half-right, they’re still interesting and unusual.”

Like the larger-than-life yarn Perl spun on a recent Tuesday night about the time the sausage-selling business almost killed him.

A few years back, he wouldn’t say exactly when, Perl parked his truck in a Markham church parking lot to catch some shut-eye after a long night of sales calls in Kankakee.

Perl says he woke up when he heard the refrigerator door open, and spotted three men running away with sausages. He jumped out of the truck and gave chase until he slipped on an oil slick on the pavement.

The three men, whom G.I. Joe says must have thought he was drunk, came after him one at a time. When the first guy brandished a knife and threatened to kill him, Perl claims he charged at him and stuck his middle-three fingers in the man’s throat. “I could feel the blood,” he said.

The second guy came at him with a gun. Perl charged and tackled him. The man got off two shots. One bullet ripped through Perl's leg. The other bullet hit him in the back. Perl says he smashed the shooter's face into the pavement until the man was unconscious.

“My adrenaline was just a crazy rush,” Perl said. “I said, ‘This ain’t my day to die. This ain’t going to kill me.’ I snapped. Lucky I did. They would have killed me execution-style.”

When the third man tried to run him over with a car, Joe said he jumped out of the way. The car crashed into a median. The driver went through the windshield.

“They’re lucky to be alive,” Perl said.

After you hear a story like that it’s hard not to feel lucky to have the opportunity to buy smoked summer sausage from a real-life action hero, even if it might be part of his shtick.

That's what makes G.I. Joe the Sausage Guy legendary.