Shortly after Thanksgiving my brothers and I began watching
for the mailman to arrive at our farm mailbox.
Clarence Corning was our mailman, and he drove a blue car. You could set your watch by his arrival,
which was always at eleven o’clock.
We were patiently waiting for the arrival of the Sears
Christmas catalog, the wish book as everyone called it. And when it arrived, we spent most of time
when our chores were done and our homework finished poring over its pages. Page after page of toys—Tinker Toys, Lincoln
logs, board games, dolls, BB guns, Yo-Yos, windup trains, teddy bears, and
books, pages of books. And clothing,
too, but we were more interested in the toys than the clothing. We each could pick out one toy and one piece
of clothing—I usually selected a book, and often a sweater, or a plaid flannel
shirt.
I especially remember
1946, for that fall we had been wired for electricity, but it didn’t come to
our farm until the spring of 1947. For our 1946 Christmas, Mother ordered a
metal erector set for the three of us to share.
With the erector set we could build windmills, steam shovels, and
cranes. The set included a little
electric motor. But we had to wait until
the following April to plug in the little motor and power the wonderful
machines we had created.
Sears first published the Sears Christmas catalog in 1933 and
continued to publish a print version until 1998. For us old timers a little bit
of Christmas disappeared when we could no longer find the Sears “Wish Book” in
our mailboxes a few days after Thanksgiving.
THE OLD TIMER SAYS:
Wishing is still something we can do—even without the Sears “Wish Book.
UPCOMING
EVENTS:
December
19, McFarlane’s, 780 Caroline St., Sauk City, Wisconsin. 1:00 p.m. Discussion and signing of Wisconsin
Agriculture: A History.
Purchase Jerry’s
DVDS and his Books from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin
(a fundraiser for them):
The
library now has available signed copies of Jerry’s DVDs, Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps and Jerry Apps a Farm Story.
Also
available are several of Jerry’s signed books including The Quiet Season (on which the DVD A Farm Winter is based), as well as Rural Wit and Wisdom and Old
Farm, (which are related to the DVD Jerry
Apps a Farm Story). Also available is Jerry’s new novel, The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County as
well as Whispers and Shadows and his
newest nonfiction book, Wisconsin
Agriculture: A History.
Contact
the library for prices and special package deals.
Patterson
Memorial Library
500 Division Street
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