Retrospect: mail order books, part0

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor mentions a memory that still intrigues him.

Maybe when I was in grade 2, we started getting paper catalogues in school from which we could order books. Each student got their own catalogue: it might have been once per month the teacher would hand out a new one.

The catalogue would show a picture of the cover of each book, a synopsis of it, and its price. At home, you’d tell your parent which you wanted, and they would cut out the icons of those books from the catalog. Then, in a baggie, they’d put the cut-outs along with the exact change to buy all the books you wanted to order. You’d hand that baggie to the teacher. A few weeks later, the book order would arrive to your classroom, in a box, from the office: everybody would get their books. As a bonus, the classroom always got one or a few books as well, depending on the size of the order.

The reason this memory resounds with me, nowadays, is likely its physicality: I recall kids bringing baggies to school full of nickels, dimes, and quarters (loonies and twonies weren’t around then in Canada). Sometimes there’d be a $1 bill in the baggie, but usually it was all done with change.

People paid for things more often with cash than any other way back then, so everyone accumulated change. It’s easy to picture the parent, after the kid was in bed, going here and there in the house, picking up loose change to put in the baggie. Back then, a chocolate bar – or a can of pop – cost around 35 cents.

Some parents were much more crafty, so their cutouts were more cleanly done. You could tell, looking at the baggie, how skillfully the order had been assembled.

My own kids went to a few book sales at their elementary school, but I can’t recall anything, in their day, like the book orders I’m describing here. Perhaps, like so many things, it was a trend that came and went. However, in my elementary school years, it was a big thing.