A Stamp of Value
By Anke Hodenpijl, Writers of Kern
It was the summer of 1958. The Arizona sun drilled through the windshield as my mother squinted to keep the light out of her eyes, hoping to ease the pain of a burgeoning migraine. Navigating an unfamiliar neighborhood, she struggled to safely steer our ’53 Ford station wagon. My six-year-old logic told me Mom needed to find some aspirin quick. I pointed to a strip mall.
“No,” she cautioned, “not here. Let’s just keep driving.”
“Here,” I demanded with authority, “Turn in here!”
Mom knee-jerk responded to my orders. We smacked into the gutter, bouncing over the sidewalk and into the parking lot. There it was, the “S & H Green Stamps” sign. She smiled.
As cash-poor immigrants from Europe, my parents insisted we four kids live penny-wise, taking advantage of everything our new country offered us, headache or no headache.
“It’s double stamps,” she said, “get some milk and bread too.”
I returned, groceries and aspirin in one hand, and a cache of S & H’s in the other. “They gave me triple stamps because we are new customers!” I gushed, believing the news would ease Mom’s head pain.
Green Stamps were like the rewards points of today’s credit cards. Designated grocers, gas stations and drug stores issued them in denominations of one, ten and fifty. Once affixed to the collector’s booklet, they became currency to purchase a piece of our American dream. They also became a way for my parents to teach us frugality, responsibility and putting our family first.
Each summer, vacation began with my mother dumping a year’s worth of stamps onto the dining table. “You kids need to glue these into the books,” she instructed.
“Ugh,” we responded in unison. In those days we licked or wetted each stamp, then affixed it to a page in the booklet. Flicking water at each other and giggling, we imagined how we might be rewarded for our hard work.
“We want baseball mitts,” my brothers announced.
“Uh-uh,” my sister repudiated, “we need a radio.”
“Mom said we need to be Americans now. That means baseball.”
“Elvis and the Everly Brothers; that’s what America is about!”
By the week’s end, we had a stack of books. It was time for a family meeting to decide what to purchase. “Mmmm,” my mother started, “a radio and mitts. Will you share your mitts with your sisters?”
“Oh yes,” my brothers promised.
“And what about the radio? I love to listen to Lawrence Welk.”
“Oh Mom, we can do champagne music whenever you want,” I assured her.
Well, summer was off to a good start. My parents were able to give their children gifts they could not otherwise afford, as well as activities to keep them busy during those hot unsupervised summers. More importantly, they were able to stamp a value for wise money management, shared work, and shared fun onto four impressionable kids.
Yes, we were living that sought-after American dream.