Every once in a while I’ll get a glimpse of my mother – seeing myself naked, hearing my laugh, meeting a situation that demands the remark, “Oh, dear God!” But today I muse joyfully on something tangible that brings back my mother and seems to elicit an ethereal flashback to many of their own mothers: S&H Green Stamps.
I recently went to an estate sale with my daughter, Jane. Jane had never been to one so I explained the concept of selling off items directly from the house where someone has moved on. I told her one day she might go through our “estate” and, perhaps, invite people in to purchase what they’d like. Hosting an estate sale is not for the faint of heart.
As we walked through the ranch house that had all of the signs of the ‘60s and ‘70s – clock radios, dictionaries, china – we came across five booklets of S&H Green Stamps. I did not hesitate to pick them up, immediately laughed and showed them to Jane to whom they meant nothing.
S&H Green Stamps was a line of trading stamps popular in the United States from 1896 until the late 1980s, Wikipedia reports. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company, founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. During the 1960s, the company issued more stamps than the U.S. Postal Service and distributed 35 million catalogs a year. Customers received stamps at checkout counters, which could then be redeemed for products from the catalog.
S&H Stamps meant waiting for something special: Pasting those stamps into booklets equaled happy anticipation. My mother always had S&H green stamps in the change section of her pink wallet.
My friend Sheila remarked, “I used to love it when my mom gave me the job of sticking them in the book.”
My friend Ellen shared the visual of her mom sitting at the kitchen table with a small bowl of water into which she’d dip the stamps and then align them with the grids in the booklets.
A former neighbor, Judy (one of 10 children), remarked, “We would fight over who would get to fill the books!”
My friend Mary recalled, “As we filled up books my parents would alternate between us and it was glorious when it was YOUR turn to pick something at the store.”
Mary could not remember what “the store” was called but, luckily, her husband, Mark, knew immediately. They were referred to as “redemption centers.”
It’s been said, “A mother’s work is never done.” S&H green stamps seemed to provide not only a bright spot in a mother’s day – but to her children, as well.
I muse joyfully that you have something as cheery as S&H green stamps in your life. If not? Perhaps it’s time. No doubt it’s out there, maybe even at the redemption center.
Susan Dromey Heeter is a writer from Dover, N.H.