The Evening Rambler for the last day of 2008

It's interesting what you can find when you clean out a drawer.

I went through a desk in our kitchen today. It had been my mom's, and beside the stuff I had recently put in there, I knew there was a stack of loose, blank paper...including some tracing paper and some carbon paper, of all things.

(As an aside...for a fun experiment, ask a child or a teenager what carbon paper was and what it was used for. Let me know what you find out.)

So you might ask, "Bob, how did they package things for sale before they started putting everything in clear plastic shrink wrap?


Well, sometimes they used a paper band. And not to change the subject, but while I'm thinking of it, does anyone know what year they stopped punching notebook paper with five holes? Not that that's important...but I do vaguely remember that a few notebooks had only two rings.

I'll bet you're itchin' to know what the Useful Premiums were. So, here you go.


Okay, it says Valuable Premiums on the back. I guess they were both Useful and Valuable. Or some of each.

Let's look at the list...hmm...

Only three of the item used electricity*. Two were battery powered (Flashlight and 6 Transistor Pocket Radio), and only the Electric Wall Clock plugged in. Many houses back in the day had an outlet high up on a kitchen wall, to plug in a wall clock. This was before battery powered clocks were common, much less any digital clocks.

I was told once that one reason that power companies took great pains to keep the Alternating Current at exactly 60 cycles per second was so electric clocks would keep the proper time. Even if you lived near the end of the line and the voltage would sometimes be allowed to drift up to 130 or 135 - and you'd burn out a few light bulbs that day - well, by golly the frequency would stay true and you'd be on time anyway.

(*Why, when I was a boy, we didn't have computers or even electronic calculators. No one had heard or even dreamed of video games, VHS tapes, DVD's, CD's or iPods. I tease my kids with talk like this...my youngest daughter's response "Oh dear, not again". Too much fun.)

I digress. Back to the list...

I'm thinking that if this promotion happened today, they wouldn't offer the Jack Knife.

Actually, I doubt that saving up a bunch of 25 cent** coupons would go over with kids today (In fact, I wonder how many coupons were sent in back then). How exciting would it be to save up for a fountain pen, a box of stationery, a stapler, or a pencil sharpener?

Yeah, I thought not. The Wrist Watch might be of interest...if it was digital. And for those who played sports, the Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Football, or Volleyball might be wanted. Notice that "Soccer Ball" hadn't appeared on the radar of our collective consiousness yet. At least not here in the good ol' USA.

And how about this interesting description "Beautiful Teenage Doll". Not a Barbie or any other recognizable brand name. Just a generic doll (not that we were familiar with the term generic yet).

The only item that really caught my eye (so to speak) was the flashlight. I could use another good flashlight. One of these days I'll go to the store to purchase one with some hard earned money. Serves me right for not saving up coupons for 45 years or so.

Anyway, I'm guessing pre-1964 here. At least, there's no ZIP code in the address...and I think those were first used in '64. Oh and Mike, did you notice this paper came from Springfield?

(**And where's my cent key gone? We used to have those on our typewriters - at least, on the old ones. Not to be found on modern computer keyboards. That's inflation for you, I guess. And now that makes me wonder how many young people today know what the lower case c with the slash through it means.)

Here it is again

Happy New Year...here's my wish for a good and healthy 2009 for all of you. I may post more thoughts on that, and some reflections on this Christmas season tomorrow.