A Little Bit Like Home

Saving Green Stamps

Going to the grocery store used to be a big deal, probably because it usually happened on Saturday night, and Saturday night meant a trip to Maryville with Mom, Dad, and my brother Joe. The evening started with supper and ended at the grocery store.

Shopping often turned into a divide-and-conquer operation. Mom carried the main list while Dad handled a few other items. It didn’t take me long to figure out that tagging along with Dad had its advantages, especially if our route passed the Brach’s Pick-a-Mix display, where you could fill a white bag with pink and purple stripes and the Brach’s logo with whatever candy caught your eye.

But the real excitement came at the checkout counter. After the groceries were rung up and Mom started writing the check, the cashier would ask, “Are you collecting Green Stamps?” Of course we were.

Mounted beside the register was a dispenser that held a reel of S&H Green Stamps. The cashier would dial the amount that matched the grocery bill, then turn the crank. A strip of bright green, neatly perforated stamps rolled out. The longer the grocery bill, the longer the strip. The machine could dispense stamps for purchases up to twenty dollars at a time, so when the cashier had to crank the dial more than once, it felt like hitting the jackpot. Sometimes they asked if we needed stamp books. Other times they simply handed one or two across the counter along with the stamps.

At home, the stamps went into a shoebox stored in the top cabinet above the pantry. That cabinet also held the family medicine supply, which meant retrieving the box required climbing onto a stepstool and stretching just far enough to reach the shelf. Mom was the one who kept track of the books. The shoebox in the cabinet was her system, and she always seemed to know exactly how close we were to filling another one.

Inside the box were loose stamps and the stamp books. The pages were off-white with a hint of green, filled with small rectangles waiting for stamps. Each Quick Saver Book held 1,200 stamps. Some books were empty. Others were partially filled, and a few were completely finished. When it felt like we had enough stamps to make progress, the shoebox came down and the books were spread across the kitchen table.

Each stamp had to be moistened and pressed into one of the empty rectangles. The traditional method involved licking the back before sticking it into the book. Green Stamps, however, tasted nothing like postage stamps. To me, they mostly tasted like ink. When we had a large pile to paste, we occasionally cheated by using a wet sponge.

Every once in a while, Mom would bring home one of the S&H catalogs so we could see what those stamps might turn into. The catalogs were filled with everything from cookware to radios to lawn chairs. Over the years we redeemed stamps for a few memorable things, including a globe and a brass spittoon with a bulldog on the side.

The prize I remember most, though, was a three-man tent. It was a simple A-frame design with a handful of stakes, two three-section poles for the ends, and a carrying bag that held everything together. The day it arrived, the package was hanging from the mailbox at the end of the lane, tied on with a string around the cardboard box. Normally the postman brought packages to the house. Joe and I probably set that tent up a hundred times over the years. Most of the time it went up in the backyard. Occasionally it appeared in the front yard. It spent a few nights at Grandma and Grandpa’s and made the trip to the Current River for the Science Club float trip more than once.

Looking back, it’s amazing how many small adventures came from a tent that started as a handful of grocery stamps. Every strip that rolled out of that little machine at the grocery store was just a small thing, but every once in a while, small things add up.

Tom Brand writes the weekly A Little Bit Like Home column about life, family, faith, and the small moments that sometimes add up—kind of like a shoebox full of S&H Green Stamps. Find more at ALittleBitLikeHome.com.