Weekly Anamnesis # 27 part B

While postage stamps and the exotic travel of such came first to mind, I also think of green stamps.

Green stamps were collected throughout my childhood. A trip to the gas station? X amount of money spent = x number of green stamps received. Ditto almost any purchase anywhere. My Mom would toss the odds and ends of green stamps into a box in her desk, and every couple of weeks or so we would sit in the kitchen at the counter with a plate holding a wet washcloth and put the green stamps into their books. The books would be bundled in fives and go back into the desk until shopping trip time. As youngsters in rural So. Calif [inland] we would go into Riverside on a family shopping trip a couple times each year. Pure agony for me, a reluctant shopper at best. But then we would go to the green stamp store. Of course we had pored over their catalog at home, but that was just to whet our appetites for the real thing!

Choosing what to get with our green stamps was always great fun. I still remember the dishes with the wheat pattern [what would they be worth in today antique shops!?] The sets of glases, our first beach towels, the long saved for punch bowl set. The purple plates which were set aside for our Jewish "family" so they could eat Kosher. Dolls, toy trucks, something for everybody.

Sometimes I miss those days of green stamps...they were a very real part of the American experience, the American culture, for decades.