Thinking about supermarkets and my grandmother led immediately to memories of S&H Green Stamps and Raleigh Coupons. She smoked two packs of Raleigh filters a day - and looking that up it was surprising how familiar all those brands still looked to me. I could remember someone who smoked most of those brands, even though most people smoke Marlboros, Winstons, or Newports. Non-filters were considered old-fashioned and less safe. The filters actually did nothing, but did at least keep flecks of tobacco from going in your mouth. My dad smoked two packs of Luckies a day, which dropped to one pack, mostly in secret, after his quadruple-bypass surgery.
I remember looking through the coupon catalogs, wondering why we never bought anything cool, just end tables and the like.
My dad smoked Camels. No coupons, non promotions, no filters. He finally stopped when he was in his 50's and lived to be 89. My mother quit in her 40's after we moved to Sandwich. I was the only child still living at home. One day she asked me to pick up some cigarettes for her (we weren't exactly around the corner from any store) and I forgot. She got so mad at me! She then did some self reflection and decided the cigarettes weren't worth it and quit a few weeks later. I was only 16 at the time and I would not have been able to buy cigarettes at that age today. I do remember buying cigarettes for my mother when we still lived in Lowell when I was 10 or 11. The store owners knew my parents so they allowed it. How times have changed!
ReplyDeleteThe locally-owned grocery store in the small town (my ex-wife's hometown) where we lived in the early 1990s still dispensed stamps with purchases which, IIRC, could be redeemed to get special sale prices. Fore-runner of the various shopper loyalty programs.
ReplyDeleteI see the Internet Archive library has at least one example of the S&H "ideabook".
ReplyDeletePerusing it I see many things that we had in our household.
I've no certainty that these items did (or did not) come to us via redeemed stamp books as opposed to being purchased elsewhere, but I recall that the stamps, as they arrived, went into a seldom-used copper chafing dish that was kept on top of the fridge. And we kids were recruited to help paste them into the booklets when it was guessed that there might be enough to get something desired or needed.
I recall that a half-complete booklet seemed to remain unchanged for many years, and when I asked about it I was told "The grocery stores we use now are closer and less expensive than the ones that still give stamps, so we're unlikely to ever fill it."