JUST HOW MANY BOOKS OF S & H GREEN STAMPS DO YOU HAVE?

     It's certainly been a while since I have seen those.
Hmmm!  How many books for a toaster? 
   I am really not sure exactly when they stopped giving 
these out, but I can certainly remember the time spent
licking those awful stamps.
   For those of you that don't recall this bit of Americana,
it was pretty common, way back when. Merchants of all types 
would give out green stamps with each purchase, as a 
sort of reward for your patronage.  You received them
at the grocery store, the pharmacy, the gas station, etc.
At some gas stations, and this was back when a business
actually courted you, they would give you double stamps
for a fill-up and throw in a couple of coke glasses.
    All houses seemed to have a drawer full of these loose
stamps, and when the drawer would no longer close some
lucky sod was delegated to lick and paste the stamps in the
book.  It took quite a few books to procure something
really usable, but that never mattered.  Everyone browsed the
catalog like it was from Tiffany's.  Then off you went,  with
your small bags of filled green stamp booklets, to the
redemption store to claim your prize.
   Soda bottles, back in those days, were also prized items.
You could wash them out and take them to the corner 
store, get your 2 cents or 5 cents per bottle reward, and get
yourself some BB Bats, licorice, fireballs, or any variety
of penny candy that your little heart desired.  Simpler 
times, of course.  But you could always see small groups
of children scouring the roadways and alleys for these
glass bottles.
    YES, RONNIE, YOUR
S&H GREEN STAMPS
BOOKS ARE WELCOME 
HERE!
     I did tell you that we have been watching the first
season of "Boardwalk Empire", and,being the curious 
creature that I am, I did a bit of research about
Warren G. Harding.  He was elected President in 1920
and died in 1923, while still in office.
   Truth is always much stranger than fiction.  You don't
have to delve too far into all of this to see the greed
and corruption that fueled this whole era in our
society.  What is that old saying, "power corrupts?
And with such a vengeance, too.  The fact that 
prohibition, as an enforceable law, was never going 
to work, only brought on more graft.  Hell, even
the Pres was having liquor parties.  It wasn't until
1933 that the whole thing was repealed.
   This show gives all kinds of historical tidbits for
you to nibble on.  For myself, doing a bit of
research on the computer can go a long way
towards filling in a few of the gaps that we, as
children in school, never seemed all that interested in.
   Time marches on, so they say.  More later maybe.