The Saturday Seven: Gone and (Nearly) Forgotten Stuff

During my travels this week I passed through some off-the-beaten-path areas that had clearly seen better days. Old gas stations, run down general stores, and dilapidated farm equipment, looking tired and simply rusting into the ground, slowly becoming one with the Earth once again. Being a thinker by nature, I found myself pondering why people allow things like this to remain. Wouldn't it be better if things were torn down, destroyed and forgotten? The answer was likely a combination of reasons-small towns without a budget to demo and rebuild, owners who had long passed away, or perhaps even a desire to cling onto some elements of the past. Maybe people in some towns don't want everything shiny and new. With so many things in our world constantly changing, maybe people don't want to forget everything from the past. This got me thinking about all sorts of things that have gone by the way-side in our nation. Which brings me to another scintillating edition of:

The Saturday Seven: Gone and (Nearly) Forgotten Stuff

#1: S&H Green Stamps. (Also known as "Green Shield Stamps") were a form of trading stamps from the 1930s through the late 1970s. Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of retailers such as supermarkets, department stores, and gas station, which could later be redeemed for products in the catalog. Customers would save up their Green Shield Stamps for a special item they saw in a catalog. There were even S&H Green Stamp redemption stores. Wow-that goes back.

#2 The 8 Track Cassette and Player: The precursor to the more modern mini-cassette. Viewed as a hip way to take your favorite music on-the-go, the 8 track tape was so much easier than those pesky vinyl albums.

#3 The Encyclopedia: No explanation needed, but can you even imagine buying a huge set of books that are out of date before the traveling salesman could even ring your doorbell? Wikipedia and the Internet pretty much killed the old fashioned hard-cover reference series.

#4 The Typewriter: I had one up through college, but they just seem SO ANCIENT these days.

#5 The Mimeograph: These babies predate the "Xerox" copier. I vividly remember these when I was going to school. The nuns would write out tests on a special paper, which would be placed on the round drum. Then you would manually turn the drum which would "print" copies in a hideous purple ink.

#6 The Percolator Coffee Pot: all I can think of is my grandmother making coffee and seeing a brown liquid bubble up at the top through that tiny clear plastic cap. It also makes me think of Maxwell House Coffee, particularly "Cora" (the waitress aka The Wicked Witch of the West) who rekindled her career as the friendly woman at some diner in the Maxwell House commercials. I knew who she really was, and her coffee scared me.

#7 Rabbit Ears TV Antenna: We had to get all four channels as best we could. These helped even get the pesky UHF and PBS stations

Bonus item: White Out Liquid Paper: Not nearly as old as some items above, but I remember using this stuff like crazy. The usefulness of this stuff pretty much dropped to nothing when those pesky computers with "word perfect" and "word processing" became the office standard.

So the point is, not everything old is bad. Sometimes it's good to be reminded of old things. Things that have outlived their popularity or usefulness. It makes us appreciate the advances and conveniences we have today.

-Rick Rockhill