A stand-alone event in the life of a child of the 60s revolves around a simple thing, delivered by our friendly mail carrier.
The days of late summer meant dwindling freedom as the calendar leaned toward the end of hay baling and the start of school. There was, of course, plenty of daily barn chores: milking the cows twice a day and scrubbing every part of the milking parlor just in case the milk inspector decided to pay us a social visit.
This time of summer had my sister closest in age to me watching the daily mail like a hawk. Finally, one simple day suddenly stood apart from the rest with her proclamation, “The Montgomery Ward catalog came today!”
There was the encyclopedia-sized one, of course, but in the same wrapped package was (ta-da!) the shiny, new Christmas catalog.
This meant a couple of delightful things. One, we could circle every single thing we dreamed of in the new Christmas catalog; two, we might be able to talk Mom into letting us have the enormous “old” catalog.
We circled and earmarked the heck out of that Christmas wish catalog, feeling certain this would be our year every dream would come true.
We were ridiculously hopeful for the most beautiful, impractical, unnecessary things: new ice skates, a doll that could talk with just the pull of a string, doll clothes and new Barbie dolls. For me, cowboy boots and a gun and holster with enough rolls of caps to load that little pistol at least 10,000 times.
We each had one Barbie doll, and that was enough, according to Santa, speaking through our mom. We had a spot under the first step leading to our cellar that held used ice skates that had been passed down to us by a family friend — surely one pair could fit well enough. A talking doll… there were enough of us to do all the talking our household needed. But, “Wish away!” Mom would say, and boy, did we.
So, on to the old Montgomery Ward or Sears catalog which was now ours. We spent hours cutting out everything from pictures of models (to serve as Barbie’s new friends) to lovely bedroom sets and fancy living room furniture. My sister Debi was totally dedicated to this effort, and kept a shoe box which held an entire new world.
We didn’t need a TV commercial telling us about a new Barbie that could ski. We just cut out a set of skis and a lovely white, fluffy coat, and suddenly we had all our Barbie needed to be a ski champ. If the cut-out man modeling a winter coat had what was required to hit it off with Barbie, well our catalog provided a few wedding dresses. My sister planned for every possibility.
I would tire of it all and go to the barn to play, or check on the calves, or search for kittens among all the likely hiding spots before it was time to start the evening milking and chores that went with it.
That big, old Sears catalog would still be there, a pair of little kids’ scissors nearby, for the rest of the fall and winter. It was pure bounty.
