Stomping through history with Green Stamps
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
You may not believe this but there was life before Amazon.
No, seriously! You can look it up in your set of encyclopedias.
Oh, that’s right, there also was a time before Google and Wikipedia, as well. I am not making this up. I was there.
Back in the time before Prime and FedEx trucks roamed the land, and we scrolled through screens and screens of shopping options, we licked sheets and sheets of S&H Green Stamps.
Every other Saturday, Dad drove Mom to Loblaws grocery store, where she crammed a cart full of enough groceries in a hopeless attempt to stay ahead of the appetites of three growing boys and a baby girl.
When the cashier finished ringing up the damages, Mom handed over the cash, and the cashier handed back a ribbon of receipt and a corresponding amount of S&H Green Stamps.
(Oh, yeah, we didn’t have debit cards back then, either, which is why Mom handed over cash.)
We boys would fight over the chance to lick the stamps and paste them into collection booklets.
Mom stacked the books in the bottom desk drawer. When you filled enough books full of Green Stamps, you could trade in filled books of stamps for things like dish towels (or toys), chairs (or toys), appliances (or toys) or — my preference that was too often overlooked — toys.
There was a whole catalog of trading stamp premiums from which to drool over and choose. It was like the Sears Christmas Wishbook for adults.
My role in this economy, besides licking the backs of hundreds of stamps, was as financial adviser and premium consultant. I counted the books and circled the toys in the catalog that we could trade for with our stacks of stamps.
Eventually, on a Saturday afternoon, off we’d go to the S&H redemption center — which was like the North Pole, only closer — and swap them for marvelous stuff.
Mom, in my opinion, wasted too many stamps on things like bedsheets and waffle irons and not enough on bicycles and footballs.
But what she did NOT waste her trading stamps on was dinnerware. Everyone knew that those came from gas stations.
I am not kidding. Back in those Googleless, Amazonless and streamingless days, gas stations constantly offered drinking glasses (made with real glass) or fine china (I don’t know the plates and bowls were made with real china, but they sure shattered if you clobbered your brother with one) or utensils, one piece at a time, free with a minimum purchase of eight gallons of gasoline.
One station once even offered miniature statues of all 36 U.S. presidents, one fill-up at a time. I think this is where McDonald’s got the idea for Happy Meals with toys.
Anyway, when Dad pulled up to the gas pumps, which rang the service bell inside, the attendant would scurry out, pump his gas, clean the windshield, check the oil, and — after Dad handed over the cash for the gas — hand Mom the next piece for the family dinnerware collection.
Has your Amazon or DoorDash driver ever checked your oil or cleaned your windshield? I thought not. And yet you mock me about the backward times of my youth. Ha!
I begged our favorite service station attendant, a burly guy named Ringo, to give away spy glasses or chemistry sets or squirt guns or anything else that would be useful instead of more dinner plates and serving spoons. He ruffled my hair and shook his head, sadly, I thought.
But he was right, kids. I already had a solid source for new toys — they were free inside cereal boxes. Or in the case of music, real live records were free ON the box.
Who needed Amazon to deliver music to your door when you already had Super Sugar Smacks in the cupboard.
The record player, of course, came from S&H Green Stamps.
Trade tales with Burt of riding dinosaurs to school at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook, which is another new-fangled invention.