A Step Forward From Way Back

I guess I think about the past more than some people. When I took a test meant to gauge one's strengths, that was confirmed. I do believe there's considerable insight to be gleaned from the travails of the past as well as the happier times. It's all happened before in the thousands of years man has been a concern, hasn't it? Sometimes I imagine that I can see things from the eyes of people who were there when it happened. Maybe I'm mistaken about that, but I get the feeling nonetheless. I think of an obsolete piece of technology and imagine when it wasn't just relevant but a revelation. Today we have instantaneous communication by means of the Internet, but it was of course not always so. It wasn't always so that you could purchase goods that way. Once you couldn't buy something unless you were physically there to buy it. Then came the mail order catalog.

Does anyone order from a printed catalog that arrived in the mail anymore? I suppose they don't, but perhaps people do still make use of the one that comes with an airline ticket. It always seemed silly to order something during the three hours one spends in the air on a transcontinental flight, but I guess you can take the thing with you and order from home. I understand people do. There's no wonder in it, though. I imagine a time 150 years ago, when many people lived on what was still the frontier. There wasn't much to be had in the way of retail shopping out past St. Louis, I gather. If one had a catalog from Sears and Roebuck, however, the goods of the world were at one's disposal. If a dress or a desk was wanted, it was necessary only to page through the publication. There weren't even photographs in it- you perused the illustrations in it until the desired product appeared.

 I don't read catalogs anymore, but I still can put myself in the shoes of those for whom it was a vital lifeline. A homestead probably required constant attention, and couldn't easily be left for such a thing as shopping. The trip to a place of any real size would take hours and be quite grueling. The bar for what constituted a necessary trip to town was probably very high. What a miracle, then, that one could have a box of cigars from Virginia and still tend to affairs as they waited for the thing's arrival. Perhaps I overstate what it meant to them, but I know what it would have meant to me. I would surely have perished for lack of books that would have been available only through such a catalog.

It must have been incredible to people that they could have a lamp from New York City or cologne from France, especially if they were living someplace like Wyoming or my home state of Arizona. I have to imagine that many such products were quite expensive and took a very long time to arrive. Perhaps sometimes they just didn't. I know myself the pleasure of looking through a catalog and indulging my imagination, though. Before the internet, I might order a catalog for movies or novelty toys and read it until it fell apart. I never order from them, really. It was just delightful to engage in flights of fancy that way. Today there's not much of the same feeling in browsing the internet for me. It may feel that way to successive generations.