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Mail order catalogsLast week J.C. Penney announced that it had published its last big catalog and resources were being shifted to online shopping. It was the last of the big mail order companies to discontinue this time-honored ritual of shopping and it hurts a little to realize that the mail order era that I treasured in my youth has been replaced by the almost instant gratification of the Internet. The arrival of a catalog from Sears, J.C. Penney or Montgomery Ward was an exciting day in my young life. We would find it wedged into the mail box by Paul Jr. He must have hated the days when giant "bricks" filled his truck cab and had to be distributed with all the other mail. I would carry the heavy three-inch-thick book to the house and present it to my mother. As soon as she had examined it and moved on to other things, it was my turn to go through the pages and look at the pictures, descriptions and prices of everything from household items to farm tools. The 1,500-page catalog, for people of meager incomes and few possessions, was a window showing us the bigger world. For Depression-scarred people, living frugally on a meager income from a small farm, it was a delightful menu of every item of luxury and necessity known to man, all neatly indexed in a book that was free. The catalog was a "wish book" for most who opened it. The realization that very few of the items could be afforded by our family did not deter me from dreaming that I could buy whatever I wanted. I would sit down with a pencil and tell myself that I could have one item on every two pages that faced me. I would read the descriptions and examine the photos before I circled one and turned the page. Some farm people bought most of their needs from the catalogs that came each quarter. I think they did so for savings, and so that only snoopy post office workers would know what they purchased. As a young TV reporter in Oklahoma in the mid-1970s, I remember attending a farm sale where the auctioneer brought out an aged cardboard box that he stated had never been opened since it arrived in the late 1930s. The story was that the farmer got a good price for his cotton so he bought his wife a washing machine at the local store and hauled it home. She had ordered a long, oval, copper wash tub from "Monkey Wards" and it arrived after she'd converted to the new washing machine. For some reason, she just put the box on the shelf and never opened it. The shiny tub with its lid and wooden handle brought $80. She said she had paid $7 for it. The catalogs of the early years had more utility than the printers ever imagined. The pages were used to start a fire in the stove or to sop up a spill in the kitchen or barn. The whole book was slid under a child that needed to sit higher at a table. Of course, the most storied use was to put an old catalog in the outhouse for reading pleasure and for toilet tissue. The slick paper and color printing of the 1960s pretty much took away that use but most folks had indoor plumbing and actually bought toilet paper by that time. I have to confess that I turned to the ladies underwear section, when I was sure no one was looking, and studied the photos of women wearing bras. I didn't know why I liked to look at them and I feared that God was going to strike me dead for doing so, but I risked it anyway. Today the catalog market is still strong but they are many in number and small in size. Almost every catalog is colorful, stylish and specialized but the concept is still the same: put an item in front of someone and they'll be more likely to buy it when they have enough money to do so. Online shopping causes most of us yuppies to go to the Internet and pull up the website rather than fill out the order blank and mail it. A few clicks and you can know all the colors and sizes, whether it is in stock and how soon it will arrive. I sometimes think that the best part of mail order was the waiting and the anticipation of the item arriving. When it came, it was great fun to bring the box into the house and carefully cut the string and peel off the tape (so the container and wrapping material could be reused) and then to behold the tool, toy or household item that it contained. The catalog era began as soon as mail service was offered in the 19th century and flourished as rural free delivery expanded daily delivery to every household in America. Catalogs continued to be dominant through the entire 20th century, with radio and television advertising encouraging consumer buying. With all the variety of items that I see today, in print and on my computer screen, nothing exceeds the youthful thrill of turning the pages of a Sears catalog and dreaming of what I could own. Editor's Note: Ken Root is an independent agricultural journalist. He was named the 2009 Farm Broadcaster of the Year and was the 2008 winner of the Oscar in Agriculture. He is an Oklahoma native and graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in Agriculture Education. Ken taught vocational agriculture at Union City, Okla., before taking his first broadcasting job with WKY Radio and Television. He worked in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri as an agricultural broadcaster and began writing for the High Plains Journal eight years ago.¬ He has spent the last five years as Lead Farm Broadcaster at WHO Radio in¬ Des Moines, Iowa. Ken has also been the executive director of the National AgriChemical Retailers Association in Washington, D.C. and the National Association of Farm Broadcasting in Kansas City, Mo. He and his wife Gail have two adult children and two grandchildren.
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