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hafoc
Somewhere in my vast DeadJournal Bookshelf of Journals about Nothing, I stated their mission. In fact, I have them because I simply enjoy the act of sliding the point of a fountain pen across good paper, and so I have to come up with something to do while I'm doing that. That's the sad, futile truth of it all.
But my DeadJournal's other purpose is to document the obscure and forgotten-- such as the fact that the most common milk container of my childhood was the half-gallon paper carton. Or the way light switches worked. (Usually as the common flip switch of today, but in really old houses you'd come across pushbutton switches- on top, a big black button with a white dot in the middle, and on bottom a plain black one. Push 'em in and with a loud CLICK they'd turn the lights on or off. And there was one house I lived in that was built in 1954 and had these Atomic Age little knobs you'd have to turn. No, not dimmers; just left off, right on. They were internally illuminated and kind of streamlined, and only served to slow down the act of turning the lights on and off. But after a couple of months in that house you'd just hook a finger over them and spin them coming into or out of a room, fast as any other switch, without thinking about it.)
Think about it. In the future they'll know all about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's affair with Marylin Monroe, and the Vast Conspiracy of the Kennedy Assassination, whether or not any of what the know is true. But they won't know about PF Flyers or that Oxydol laundry detergent was white with green flecks in it.
So was born Old Fart Theater, wherein I will bore the one or two people who actually look at these entries with details of Deserves To Be Forgotten History, and how I walked thirty miles through deep snow uphill both ways to get to the computer bunker to submit my pack of punch cards to the Computer Acolytes. But we were GLAD to have our punch cards. We were THANKFUL. Because we knew there were people worse off than us who didn't have punch cards at all!
So what about boxtops?
In 1962 or so there was hardly a breakfast cereal that wasn't offering some toy or other in return for sending boxtops through the mail. The deal would be something like $1.25 and one boxtop, or 25 cents and three boxtops, to some address, and they'd mail you a toy in return.
I can remember two toys I got that way. One was a fairly large F-100 fighter plane toy that had a little spring gun in its nose to fire plastic darts; the extra darts snapped into racks under the wings, where the real plane carried rockets or bombs. It was molded in heavy mottled gray flexible plastic that was meant to be silver. A pretty cool toy for what it cost.
The other was a red plastic race car that had a rubber band powered propeller. Wind the prop up, let it spin, and off the car would go. The cool thing was that you could turn it upside down take the wheels off, take the snap-on driver's head off the top and put it on the bottom, and it became a propeller driven bathtub boat.
Of course it all went through the US Mail, because we had nothing else. And it always went to the other guy in town who had my name before he turned it around and sent it on to me. The postman (and they were all men) never read the actual addresses, he just knew where everyone in town lived. That was common in those tiny rural towns at that time too.
You sent actual money through the mail for this stuff. Credit cards? What's a credit card? Most private citizens didn't even have checking accounts back then.
Of course this sort of thing wasn't just for kids. Raleigh Cigarettes offered coupons on each pack you'd save up and send in for various prizes, if you lived long enough. Betty Crocker had coupons for different housewares. And of course S&H Green Stamps was the granddaddy of them all.
(to the tune of Greensleeves)
"Green stamps were all she gave
Green stamps were all I took
Green stamps that I could save
And I pasted them all in my Green Stamps Book."
And pasted and pasted and PASTED, every time Mom came back from the grocery store. Eventually we'd get enough Green Stamps for something or other. I presume you could mail them in, but as I remember it we'd actually gather up our sack of completed Green Stamp Books and go off to a department store in The City, where off in a quiet corner they had a room full of things you could get with your stamps.
We ate off plates we got that way, and lit the living room with lamps we got that way, for about 20 years. Wasn't the best quality stuff, but it wasn't throw away quality either.
About the only way you're going to run into references to that culture of boxtops, or coupons, or trading stamps, and the prizes you'd get for them, is the Green Stamps song I quoted above. I still hear that on the radio every once in a while.
And then there's the Rocky and Bullwinkle episode where Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale have a plot to destroy the American economy by counterfeiting boxtops. That one probably goes over the head of any modern viewer.
But you know what? It would have worked.
But my DeadJournal's other purpose is to document the obscure and forgotten-- such as the fact that the most common milk container of my childhood was the half-gallon paper carton. Or the way light switches worked. (Usually as the common flip switch of today, but in really old houses you'd come across pushbutton switches- on top, a big black button with a white dot in the middle, and on bottom a plain black one. Push 'em in and with a loud CLICK they'd turn the lights on or off. And there was one house I lived in that was built in 1954 and had these Atomic Age little knobs you'd have to turn. No, not dimmers; just left off, right on. They were internally illuminated and kind of streamlined, and only served to slow down the act of turning the lights on and off. But after a couple of months in that house you'd just hook a finger over them and spin them coming into or out of a room, fast as any other switch, without thinking about it.)
Think about it. In the future they'll know all about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's affair with Marylin Monroe, and the Vast Conspiracy of the Kennedy Assassination, whether or not any of what the know is true. But they won't know about PF Flyers or that Oxydol laundry detergent was white with green flecks in it.
So was born Old Fart Theater, wherein I will bore the one or two people who actually look at these entries with details of Deserves To Be Forgotten History, and how I walked thirty miles through deep snow uphill both ways to get to the computer bunker to submit my pack of punch cards to the Computer Acolytes. But we were GLAD to have our punch cards. We were THANKFUL. Because we knew there were people worse off than us who didn't have punch cards at all!
So what about boxtops?
In 1962 or so there was hardly a breakfast cereal that wasn't offering some toy or other in return for sending boxtops through the mail. The deal would be something like $1.25 and one boxtop, or 25 cents and three boxtops, to some address, and they'd mail you a toy in return.
I can remember two toys I got that way. One was a fairly large F-100 fighter plane toy that had a little spring gun in its nose to fire plastic darts; the extra darts snapped into racks under the wings, where the real plane carried rockets or bombs. It was molded in heavy mottled gray flexible plastic that was meant to be silver. A pretty cool toy for what it cost.
The other was a red plastic race car that had a rubber band powered propeller. Wind the prop up, let it spin, and off the car would go. The cool thing was that you could turn it upside down take the wheels off, take the snap-on driver's head off the top and put it on the bottom, and it became a propeller driven bathtub boat.
Of course it all went through the US Mail, because we had nothing else. And it always went to the other guy in town who had my name before he turned it around and sent it on to me. The postman (and they were all men) never read the actual addresses, he just knew where everyone in town lived. That was common in those tiny rural towns at that time too.
You sent actual money through the mail for this stuff. Credit cards? What's a credit card? Most private citizens didn't even have checking accounts back then.
Of course this sort of thing wasn't just for kids. Raleigh Cigarettes offered coupons on each pack you'd save up and send in for various prizes, if you lived long enough. Betty Crocker had coupons for different housewares. And of course S&H Green Stamps was the granddaddy of them all.
(to the tune of Greensleeves)
"Green stamps were all she gave
Green stamps were all I took
Green stamps that I could save
And I pasted them all in my Green Stamps Book."
And pasted and pasted and PASTED, every time Mom came back from the grocery store. Eventually we'd get enough Green Stamps for something or other. I presume you could mail them in, but as I remember it we'd actually gather up our sack of completed Green Stamp Books and go off to a department store in The City, where off in a quiet corner they had a room full of things you could get with your stamps.
We ate off plates we got that way, and lit the living room with lamps we got that way, for about 20 years. Wasn't the best quality stuff, but it wasn't throw away quality either.
About the only way you're going to run into references to that culture of boxtops, or coupons, or trading stamps, and the prizes you'd get for them, is the Green Stamps song I quoted above. I still hear that on the radio every once in a while.
And then there's the Rocky and Bullwinkle episode where Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale have a plot to destroy the American economy by counterfeiting boxtops. That one probably goes over the head of any modern viewer.
But you know what? It would have worked.
