Reflections: Just a few more books

Ed Hungness

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Ed Hungness

June 12, 2011

By ED HUNGNESS Local Columnist The Record Eagle Wed Apr 04, 2012, 02:29 PM EDT

The "lost" item is usually something I use daily like car keys, glasses or my cellphone. Recently, I was experiencing one of those frustrating events. It seems my hearing aid was missing. I wandered from room to room I looked in all of the likely places. It was nowhere to be found.

I expanded my search to include the nightstand, dresser drawers and closet. It had to be somewhere in the house, right?

Occasionally while on such a quest, we find an item that we weren't looking for. In my case, it was something I hadn't thought about in years. Remember S&H Green Stamps? Tucked into the back of a drawer, under a small box of expired fishing licenses, was a strip of S&H Green Stamps. It wasn't a full book, just a few stamps from a long time ago, but they sparked a memory.

I started saving Green Stamps in the late '60s. I was fresh out of college, starting a new job and short on funds. A few readers might be too young to have experienced the Green Stamp era. When purchasing groceries, gasoline, clothing or almost anything else, shoppers were awarded Green Stamps. The friendly grocer or gas station attendant gave one Green Stamp for every dime spent. If $5 worth of gasoline was purchased, the consumer received 50 stamps. This may have been the original "rewards" program.

I really got into this new-found way of getting something for nothing. At the conclusion of one Saturday afternoon shopping trip, I went back to my apartment, poured a glass of wine, and thumbed through the sparsely populated S&H Green Stamp book. I sat at my kitchen table, licking stamps and pasting them onto the empty pages. Each page required 50 stamps and there were 24 pages in a book. By the time I was finished, my tongue was laminated with a curious flavor blend of stamp glue and red wine.

Once my first book was filled, I rushed to the local redemption center, requested a free catalog and thumbed through the pages that were filled with pictures of great camping equipment such as sleeping bags, camp stoves, lanterns and tents. I anticipated cashing in on a new toaster, crockpot, blender or an electric frying pan. The possibilities were endless! The sky was the limit!

The only problem was that all I could get with my one book was a set of salt and pepper shakers.

Not to be discouraged, I grabbed a fistful of empty Green Stamp books and returned to my apartment with the new catalog containing a cornucopia of "must have" items. Catalogs always make for good reading material no matter what room one is studying in. Perusing the brochure, I folded page corners over, marking future redemption possibilities.

Months passed. I spent hours licking more stamps and filling additional books. Meanwhile, I had nightmares of succumbing to glue poisoning. Filled books were bound together with a blue rubber band that once secured a stalk of celery. I hid my treasure trove in the empty flour canister and looked forward to my next visit to the redemption center.

Sadly, stamp programs faded into the sunset during the recession of the 1970s. It was a good run that not only helped me to acquire much-needed camping equipment and other household items, but taught me the merits of saving for things that I wanted and couldn't afford to buy.

That's what we did before the proliferation of credit cards. We had dreams, and we saved.

Ed Hungness and his wife owned their cottage on Fife Lake for six years before moving there after his retirement in 2005. He can be reached at edhungness@yahoo.com.