The Fare Lady of my life, a phrase my Father used when speaking of my Mother and which rubbed off on me, discovered an archive of the Sears Catalogs on Ancestry.com. In looking through a number of ‘Wish Books’, I was amazed to see just how much of my youth had come from these catalogs. Young people might be surprised to learn that catalogs like the ones from Sears or JC Penny, really were the Amazon of the day. They held a special place in the home and were much thumbed through. I can recall many trips to the catalog stores, being towed along as an endless supply of packages always seemed to be waiting for us. In an age before the internet, catalog sales ruled the home; when the parents passed away, there were still old Sears catalogs in the telephone flip top end table.

I recall reading that Sears had it’s catalogs cut to a smaller size, the idea being that you’d always put the smaller book on top of the larger one and therefore, the Sears catalog was most always on top of the Penny catalog. Sears was just a ubiquitous part of everyones life though out the 60’s and 70’s.

Surfing Amazon or any of the like web sites will never equal the enjoyment of paging though a Wish Book; ah but then again, I’m old and can’t really figure out what all the fuss about this Facebook thing is…

My apology if this posts more than once, everything white screened so I didn’t know if the action was completed.