| Inquiring minds Inquiring minds are asking, “What are we going to do when gas hits (pick a number) $4.00?” It’s there. $6.00? $10.00? $12.00? Don’t be surprised—I thought it was getting pricy when premium unleaded went above 32 cents a gallon. But that was Before the Flood. And also before the Internet, eBay, Google, and cell phones. But, alas, not before Mail Order Nation. UPS and FedEx are merely modern refinements, at a higher price and reliable service, on the All-American concept of Wanting It Now, and Getting It Later. In the rural farm communities and small towns of the Piney Woods of an earlier era, the semi-annual Sears & Roebuck catalog, was a resource of personal, social and utilitarian value. Some families with broader interests and resources probably also had the competing Montgomery Ward book. And there were some, who might in today’s society be readers of such outré periodicals as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Skeptical Inquirer, and quietly hold beliefs bordering on evolution and incipient Episcopalianism, who had the Spiegel catalog as well. But for the indigenous Baptists, Methodists, Campbellites, and Pencecostals, Sears & Roebuck was as fundamental to life as the King James Bible, Garrett’s Snuff, and Huey Long politics. Sears & Roebuck presented life as it was lived in the America of its day. Choices of Good, Better, and Best in everything from work shoes, overalls, and horse collars to garden tools to plain and fancy kitchen pots and pans to school clothes in the Fall and Winter book to tires and spark plugs to sheets and mattresses to Christmas toys, roller skates and bicycles and . . . well, I don’t recall ever seeing an offering of a live Jersey milk cow, but I think I do remember ordering day-old baby chicks, and there was indeed a lot of the equipment needed if you had a Jersey cow. In the Ladies Clothing section of the book, everything was straightforward and informative. Normal looking ladies like any of those you might meet at church or at your grandmother’s birthday picnic wore the dresses, suits, coats, shoes, hats, etc., which were pictured and described in complete detail. Sizes, colors, fabrics, thread count, shipping weight, price. Of course, there were those of us to whom the “etc.” was also interesting. We could not have defined the word “pornography,” nor have known what was to be done with it. But we knew that here was an education in human anatomy that we were otherwise ignorant of, and it was stimulating to receive the education which no school that I ever attended offered. The actual ordering was as exciting in its way as a trip to the mall, studying the illustrated catalog, looking and debating whether to order the “Good”, which sounded sturdy enough, and had the lowest price, or to go for the “Better” or, golly, to splurge for the “Best!” If you were picking out clothes for school, or stuff for Christmas, you might be consulted on your choice of color, style, or size. For shoes, you’d stand with your foot on a chart printed in the catalog. For clothes, you’d be tape measured along several dimensions of your body. And by the time the choice was made, you were already wearing, using, and enjoying the goods in your mind’s eye. I learned later in life that this process followed
exactly the Five Great Rules of Selling, laid out in the
Dale Carnegie Sales Course: Attention, Interest,
Conviction, Desire, and Close . . . which I had occasion
to both use, and teach to a generation of advertising
sales rookies. Many an advertising designer and copy
writer has been referred to the Sears catalog as a guide
for making the sales pitch in print. Not everyone has
learned the rules, but they still are the rules. Today of
course, every mail brings another box full of mail order
catalogs, books, sheets, cards, some of which are well
done, some not. |