Everything Was Better Then

Remembering a 1966 trip to the S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Funny how things come back to us out of the dusty recesses of our minds.

I was talking with my HR Director on Friday, and we were joking about the merit increases and bonuses that were paid out in April, and the subject of me not getting one this year because I officially started on January 2.

He was joking that I should get something, and I responded with “Yeah, probably fifty bucks and two books of S&H Green Stamps!”

He laughed. We are about the same age, so he got the reference.

Other than as memorabilia, S&H Green Stamps are worthless today (as far as I know) but they were a big deal when I was a kid growing up in rural Mississippi.

There were catalogs, and stores even, redemption centers they were called, where you could go and trade the stamps in for stuff – and not cheap Chinese crap. Back then you could get a US made blender that weighed as much as brick of gold. No plastic here – it was built from stamped steel and thick glass with a power cord sized to run a welder – because the motor was comparable to one that is installed on the wheel of a Tesla today.

That sucker could crush gravel and would still outlive most purchasers, to be handed down in wills for generations to come.

Before the computer age brought about electronic tracking of purchases and loyalty cards, getting Green Stamps (or the competitor, Quality Stamps) at the grocery store checkout was the way customer loyalty programs were run. Based on your purchases and the store/brand promotion, the checkout girl handed you a cash register receipt and the number of stamps corresponding with the amount purchased.

I remember at least one service station in town that gave out stamps.

I remember there were denominations, of one, ten and fifty. It took fifty singles, five tens, or the jackpot, a fifty to fill up a page. The books had twenty-four pages, so if you had a bunch of ones, that was going to be a lot of lickin’ and a stickin’.

I remember my first mistake at begging for responsibility. My mom would fill up a shoe box with loose stamps before she would stick them in the books. When I was seven or so, I negotiated a deal to fill up books for a nickel a book. I think it might have been my first paying job.

I remember sitting at our kitchen table, one of those 1960’s tables with the Formica patterned tops and metal legs with that box in front of me, already counting my earnings. Momma directed me to use up all the singles first, then the tens and then the fifties.

I came to quickly understand that a tongue could run out of spit. Working those sheets and strips of ones was awful. I can still taste the water activated adhesive and it was nasty – and long lasting. At least three teeth brushings to get rid of it.

I loved the fifties. One lick and the page was done. Twenty-four of them and the book was finished. I eventually learned that a small, wet sponge was the way to go if you were really interested in production speed and saving your taste buds.

After about eight months or so, mom had collected two shoe boxes of stamps and books and I had pasted them up. I remember how thrilled I was getting paid, but as a bonus, I got to pick something out of the catalog for myself. I wanted a Johnny 7 (the guys will know what this was) but it was too many books, so I settled with a full set of army men with jeeps and a couple of tanks. The money came in handy because the books were treated as currency, but you had to pay the sales tax in cash.

As I recall, we had to fill out an order form, mail it in, and weeks later we would get a notice in the mail that the order had arrived at the redemption center. Then we made the thirty-minute trek to Tupelo to pick up our order.

The day we went to pick up our order, I thought I had won the lottery.

My kids would laugh that that – but those were the times. We appreciated things more then. I know I did. Small things seemed so big to a seven-year-old boy from a farm in rural North Mississippi.

Would that it could still be that way.

Everything was better then; everything is worse now.