“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
Winter was kind to us yesterday. Off cape got snow; we got rain, tremendous rain, and it was warm enough last night that it didn’t freeze. Because of that storm, a goodly amount of the snow is gone.
Today is damp and ugly. Nothing is moving on the trees. The sky is a light gray. A little bit of sun would be welcomed.
In Hyannis was a green stamp redemption center. My mother would let us lick her green stamps and place them in the book as if it were a privilege. We’d even fight over turns. She kept the books in a kitchen drawer. I remember the pages and the squares where the stamps, all with S&H on the front, were supposed to go. My mother once got a table lamp with her green stamps. She put it in the living room. For some reason, it’s the only redemption I remember.
My mother bought every book of our encyclopedia from the supermarket, one issue each week. I remember the books had red covers and took up most of the space in the living room bookcase. When I was bored, I’d pick one and then open it at a random page and read what I’d found. You could buy a yearly supplement to keep it current, but we never did. My mother also bought a set of Melmac dishes at the supermarket. They were virtually indestructible which, I figure, was the allure. She also bought the special dishes like the gravy boat and the vegetable dish with a divider down the middle. A few plates lasted for decades, and I think there might have been one in the cabinet when my mother passed away. Its pattern was gone, wheat stalks I think, and there were scratches and nicks, but it had survived four kids and endless hand washings for well over forty years. I don’t know what happened to that plate. I can’t think it was bought at the house sale. Its worth was sentimental and, in a way, historical. Supermarkets don’t give away anything anymore.
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January 19, 2011 at 1:30 pm
We had the Green Stamps too, along with those from Clark Gas Stations, King Korn, and a brand called TV (Top Value). I remember saving the stamps forever (we too took turns pasting them in the booklets) but I never remember anything Mom ever got with them. Of course if it wasn’t something to play with, it didn’t matter to us kids.
Yes, the green Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia. Mom picked one up every week at Kroger’s and they saw plenty of use as we 4 kids journeyed through high school. I’m sure it amused the teachers to see half the class plagiarizing from the same source. It used to be a horrendously huge investment for a family to actually purchase a set but I’m sure that you can buy Encyclopedias these days for about a nickel a pound. The internet’s pretty much ravaged the Encyclopedia business.
Somewhere too, in our basement, is the lone holdout of the set of pine cone dinnerware that Kroger’s gave gave out to loyal shoppers. Another souvenir from a bygone era.
Of course, the true family heirloom is the bowl that Grandma used for gravy that was passed down to our mother and now sits in my sister’s basement. It was a giveaway bowl of yellow with red poppies, probably from the ’30s and after Mom died we all decided that it was the one thing that each of us 5 kids wanted. We agreed that it would be claimed by a lottery, along with the picking rights in choosing our favorites of the three surviving Gilby’s Gin glasses from an original set of 4. Thus, avoiding any bloodshed.
Mom’s been gone for five years now, and we still haven’t had the drawing. I think in some way it’s symbolizing of the finality of Mom’s death keeps us from doing it. But, at our ages, we’d better get to it before the next generation gets added, by succession, to the mix.
The rich and powerful can have their endowments and passing down of fortunes and properties. We working class families treasure our gravy bowls and gin glasses almost as dearly.
January 19, 2011 at 9:42 pm
John,
I don’t remember any other kinds of stamps around my town. Maybe there were some in stores my mother didn’t shop in. The lamp didn’t excite me either. The fun was filling the books.
I laughed at the plagiarizing because I used that encyclopedia all the time for my grammar school reports.
My mother too has been gone five years, and I have a chain she wore all the time. It has a small diamond on it and none of them are worth much money, but that’s not their value. It was that my mother wore it all the time.
I totally agree with your last paragraph.
January 19, 2011 at 2:03 pm
I have a vague memory of those stamps too, but as I remember they were red over here. But my mother has never had the energy to keep up any kind of collecting so I don´t think we ever got anything 🙂 🙂
The temperatures are dropping here again and tonight the air is filled with clouds and fog. It was rather exciting to drive to work this morning, one never could guess when or if the tires would get a grip on the asphalt 🙂 🙂 🙂
Have a great day now!
Christer.
January 19, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Christer,
I think just about every family I knew collected those stamps. You had to shop anyway so the stamps gave you a bonus.
It’s is damp and raw here now.
January 20, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I just remembered! They do like that over here yet! Last year one could get a whole dining set if one collected those stamps! White with some printing on them this time.
Christer.
January 19, 2011 at 4:10 pm
We rushed to give our huge collection of S&H (that stands for Sperry and Hutchinson) of the stamps to our local neighborhood store in Austin. They were ceasing giving and taking the books after having them for their whole store existence. We got a beach chair, a cot and something else I can’t recall right now. My aunt kept me in study lamps through high school and college from them. The lamps were so cheap they didn’t last long. I wasn’t an electrical engineer then, so I didn’t just replace the switches like I do now. 😉
About 35 of the books that we turned in were the ones I’d glued my mother’s stamps into in the 1960’s. About 15 more were stamps we gathered from my mother’s boxes of things she just didn’t have the energy to sort. Those were all of the 10¢ stamp variety!!! The local store had been giving the $1 stamps for years. But, we bundled them up and they still had value.
Also of note: If you still have some of the books of stamps, you can STILL redeem them! See this:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4542416_redeem-sh-green-stamps.html
And, in case you wax nostalgic for a view of them, there is an expanded photo and history of the company here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26H_Green_Stamps
January 19, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Oh, I recalled the third thing we got. Yet another nice bookcase. I still have almost all the collection of bookcases that my aunt also supplied me with in the 50s and 60s. If you don’t bend or crush them, they will seemingly last forever.
January 19, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Rick,
I don’t remember anything except the lamp, but I’m sure my mother got other stuff. I figure I just didn’t notice.
It is amazing that you can still turn in green stamps for both stuff and cash. All over America there must be drawers with a book or two of green stamps. They had value and I bet they were never tossed away.
My aunts were never as generous.
January 19, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Hi Kat,
Ah, the S&H green stamp pup tent. Brings back memories. The first time we used it, the sky poured down buckets and the tent leaked like a sieve. We spent the rest of the camping trip sleeping in the little utility trailer which was actually much more comfortable than a tent.
I still remember the crinkliness of the books after all the stamps were stuck into them.
My mother got those same encyclopedias and I still have them. She didn’t get the Melamine but got the “china” dinnerware instead. I don’t remember what the pattern was but it didn’t survive our childhood. Probably the Melamine would have been the better choice for us.
January 19, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Hi Caryn,
My mother got to pick what we exchanged for the stamps. She was the one who did the heavy work: making the list, shopping and then putting away the groceries. It never really made any difference to us, but if I had known there were such stuff as tents, I’d have paid more attention.
My mother eventually had several sets of china, including a couple for Christmas, but I think I was in college when she started using them every day. When I’d come home for vacation, I’d always grab the Melmac, purely out of habit. I wish I’d taken that plate.
January 20, 2011 at 12:59 pm
The only thing I remember about the Melmac was that it always showed cut marks from the knives and the marks were always dark so the plates looked dirty all the time. I don’t miss the Melmac.
January 19, 2011 at 9:32 pm
This week I am sharing winter misery with you since I am in Toronto Canada on business. On Monday morning the temperature was about 8 degrees and on Tuesday it warmed up to about 33. Today was cold with snow flurries. They report the temperature here in Celsius so It seems colder when the thermometer in the rental car reads -13 C.
Our mothers must have been cut from the same cloth. We helped her put the S&H green stamps into the book until our tongues could not longer stand the taste of the glue. Then we switched over to using a damp sponge to fill up the books. I don’t remember my mother or father ever redeeming the stamps. They must have been thrown out during one of my parents moves.
When I was in elementary school the teachers all sold the ‘The World Book’ encyclopedia during the summer to make extra money. They used that encyclopedia as a reference in their classroom. This made my father angry because he thought that they were promoting that encyclopedia for their own profit. Therefore, my mother was ordered to buy the same version of the encyclopedia at the grocery store that your mother bought. They were bound in red covers. Like you I took them down every so often to browse through the articles.
I assume that growing up during the great depression and then suffering through the shortages of WWII as the caldron that forged their life long aversion spending money on frivolous things. Saving those stamps was a way to stretch every dollar they spent on necessities and still get a little luxury item for free.
We also had the Melmac dishes that were advertised as indestructible. I think that this product was an outgrowth of the depression. You could buy a set of dishes that would never break. I wonder how many sets of Melmac are at the bottom of land fills across the country. Melmac has a half life greater than Uranium 235. The stuff will never biodegrade.
January 19, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Bob,
It is always good to share misery with friends though I’m sorry the misery is frigid cold and flurries. Welcome to winter!
I had nuns so there wasn’t any moonlighting, but I remember one teacher from the high school where I worked who sold them. He was quite the sleazy human being, and I doubt any faculty member would have given him the commission by buying the books.
My father was far more parsimonious than my mother, but even she couldn’t pass up those plates.
January 20, 2011 at 6:01 am
I usually don’t get to visit your place here during the week. But I had some time tonight as the boys finished their exams last week and evening classes haven’t resumed since my return from Manila. Sounds exotic, doesn’t it. Living in paradise is sure nice. Especially after reading about what you all have been through this winter. Cheer up, spring is just around the corner, albeit a very long corner. After all it is only mid January.
Of course I remember the S&H craze. My mother and her two sister as well as her eight sister-in-laws all saved the dang things. As I recall, and it was longer ago than last week, they would get together on Saturday for a ‘stamp licking’ as they called it. Then the shopping would begin with all of them pawing through the latest catalogs. There was a redemption center in Greenfield, which was no more than a catalog store. You’d bring in your books, fill out a form with what you wanted, wait for a clerk to take the form and your books and wait for the call saying your order had arrived and that you had three days to pick it up or it would be sent back to the warehouse. Couldn’t keep it at the store as there was only so much room.
I know they got a bunch of stuff. There was a ledger of sorts as a means of keeping track of who loaned who how many books. It was a rather big family venture. My father, as did all the rest of the family men, sat out. Except when it was time to retrieve the ‘goods’, then they were enlisted to do the retrieving. I remember a few of the items, a cooler (Coleman of course) a lantern (another Coleman) and a card table with four chairs. The table collapsed the first time used and of course there was no warranty. But my father said “well at least the kids can use the chairs” and they moved everything back to the dinner table. LOL
Lots of memories, Kat. Seems to be getting more of them. Not that I mind, I’m have a very good journey and thanks to your blogs, I get nudged to remember the best parts.
Thanks,
Carl
January 20, 2011 at 11:34 am
Carl,
Here on the Cape we’ll be lucky to get warm days in May. A few arrive here and there in April, but they seem to taunt.I’m actually okay with the late spring as fall is wonderful.
I remember living in Africa and wishing for snow and cold weather, especially around Christmas time. That first winter home I froze.
My mother had to make do with her own stamps as my aunts had their collection as well. You reminded me of card tables. We had one and it served so many purposes. It was for cards, jigsaw puzzles, buffet food and playing games. I have been on the look out for one but they’re not so easy to find.
My father too had little to do with the stamps. My mother didn’t learn to drive until she was in her late 30’s so my dad was stuck being her chauffeur, even to the redemption center. That building is still there now. I’ll have to look the next time I’m in that area to see what it is now.
January 20, 2011 at 11:24 am
Wow, the S&H memory has certain struck home with lots of us. To go with that, I have to bring up the Welches Grape Jelly and many other pop brand glasses that became a part of regular dinnerware. Warm thoughts on a chilly day when we still have a foot of snow on the ground and the squirrels are vying with the birds at the feeders. All the best.
January 20, 2011 at 11:40 am
Bob,
I still have a few jelly glasses, and I treasure them. They were a fixture of my childhood. Looney Tunes characters are on mine. I also have glasses which had shrimp cocktail in them. My mother used that shrimp for her famous shrimp dip.
Less snow here as we have had rain the last couple of days. When I went to get the paper in the driveway this morning, I noticed the rain was now black ice on the sides of the road. We’re in for chilly nights, low teens, for the next few days.
Despite the cold, I have to go out as I need more thistle for my feeder. There are more goldfinches here than I have ever seen in the winter. With the possibility of snow coming, I need to fill all the feeders. I’m always freezing when I come back inside.