Column: Sears and Roebuck
A few weeks ago, while taking two of my now-teenage granddaughters shopping for outfits for a sports banquet, I became nostalgic. As we were walking through Penney’s, I tried to explain to them the significance of a Sears and Roebuck catalog.
From the time I was old enough to breathe, I remember being not only enamored, but also fascinated in every way by the two-plus-inch-deep catalog. As my 7-year-old grandson would say, “Back in my day . . . “ That catalog was our Amazon. Virtually every product known to man would appear in that printed shoppers’ encyclopedia with descriptive annotations and market-driven pricing under each item.
One of the very significant class distinctions often noted by my mother when describing her privileged youth vs. that of my immigrant-family father’s youth was the fact that mom’s family used their previous year’s Sears catalog for toilet paper in their outhouse. My father’s family, on the other hand, was relegated to using grape leaves for their Charmin activities. Now that was a real eye-opener for my granddaughters.
Not unlike the line from Virginia Slims cigarettes, which was target-marketed toward women in the 1960s and 70s,“You've Come a Long Way, Baby,” or rather as in our family’s case, “We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.” That’s especially true when you think about the fact that we don’t even get those catalogs anymore.
By the time I came along, there were different releases of the catalog for different seasons. The Christmas catalog, however, was my favorite. In our house, that catalog was usually referred to as the wish book because we couldn’t afford to buy much. But because Pittsburgh was an hour away, it presented trends that were taking hold in the wider world that we otherwise might not have seen in our local stores. We could order everything from shoes and clothes to little red wagons and tools.
Because my only living sibling was another male, the Sears catalog also gave me a chance to take a peek at illustrations of members of the opposite sex in underwear. Of course, that ended up being one of my confessable sins. Truthfully, it could be all things to all people, when nearly 70 percent of the country was still living in primarily rural areas. I’m sure that the two most sought after and well-read books of that time were the Bible and the Sears Roebuck catalog.
When the fall catalog arrived, I was permitted to order four outfits for school. The fifth outfit was simply a reshuffling of something from the previous four days. Our only restrictions in those days were to avoid wearing yellow on Tuesday or green on Thursday because that would indicate we were members playing on a different team. Of course, this was long before sensitivity toward freedom regarding LGBTQ rights.
The Christmas catalog, only about an inch thick, was truly our dreamland. I’d spend hours trying to decide which one or two toys I might have a chance of receiving from Santa that would make the cut. Nevertheless, everything was fair game during my younger years. That was because I didn’t have a complete understanding of how limited our Santa budget was. Hence on Christmas morning, the three or four things I got were sometimes a disappointment due to my youthful greed, but they were always a great surprise.
The most important part of having that thin-paper catalog was that you weren’t limited to screen time. By the time the holiday came, the pages were dog-eared, marked and re-marked. I’m not exactly sure when materialism completely consumed us as Americans, but I believe it was around the time when moms went to work and there was more funny money available.
Regardless, I would not trade my time with Messrs. Sears and Roebuck for anything. It was magical.
Nick Jacobs of Windber is a healthcare consultant and author of two books.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Nick Jacobs column reminiscing about the Sears Christmas catalog
