<p>Raleigh coupons… wow, I had forgotten about those. I helped my grandfather with them. </p>
<p>I like to look at a map first for an overview… then have onboard navigation for step-by-step. Honestly you can’t beat GPS when dealing with tricky intersecting roads. It even gives you a heads about which lane for upcoming exit (not always obvious on a map).</p>
<p>I remember green stamps. I think we got a toaster for opening a bank account - I don’t remember what we used the green stamps for. Maybe a vacuum?</p>
<p>I have a Griswold cast iron dutch oven that my aunt gave me; it was a wedding present to her parents. It has a date stamp of February 10, 1920. I now use it to make bread according to the recipes in the “Flour Water Salt Yeast” book by Portland baker Ken Forkish.</p>
<p>I have an old nut chopper that belonged to my grandmother. She died in 1974.
It has an aqua colored plastic top that holds the chopper mechanism which screws on to the little glass jar that the nuts are put in. It is the only nut chopper I’ve ever owned. Still works great. </p>
<p>We did Gold Bond stamps. My mother kept them in a big cookie tin. When the tin got full, it was my job to stick them in the books.</p>
<p>I also have some 31 year old Corning Ware casserole dishes, the white ones with little blue flowers on the side. The little Corning Ware teapot is the only teapot I’ve ever had. All were wedding gifts.</p>
<p>I remember green stamps! When my grandmother had saved enough, she would take me and my brothers to the redemption center (in a town 30 miles away) and let us pick out a toy. Once I “bought” a beautiful Thumbelina (?) baby doll. I took her home, rocked her and put her to bed in my room. When I went back to get her, I found that my little brother had cut off all of her hair! </p>
<p>Green stamps were still around in the early years of my marriage, and I remember doing most of my Christmas shopping with them one year.</p>
<p>Anyone ever order from the Spiegel catalog? I still have and use a little kitchen step stool that I bought from the catalog more than 30 years ago. It is shaped like a little chair with a high back and a heart cut out at the top–a perfect handle to move it around and just the right height to help a short person reach the top shelf.</p>
<p>Our family did lots of mail orders to Sears ,JC Penney, Spiegel, and Montgomery-Ward.
We lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Mail orders were our lifeline. If we wanted a big shopping trip, we had to drive an hour and half to get to the nearest mall.</p>
<p>I set my GPS to the British female voice. Crisp and authoritative. If I were a fetichist, I could imagine her in leather with a whip–but I’m not. I needle my wife by saying Miss Navi is endlessly patient, and never has a mean thing to say. But I could imagine a GPS voice selections saying things like “recalculating, you idiot!” And how about cartoon or movie voices? Homer Simpson: “You missed that turn, doh!” or Oliver Hardy: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into!”</p>
<p>I’m a map person too, altho we do have a GPS. I always check the map first, so I have a general idea of where we are and where we’re going.</p>
<p>My husband got an umbrella with Carlton cigarette coupons. We still have the umbrella, but ironically, it has a cigarette burn hole in it. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>My mom did lots of catalog shopping by phone, even though we lived in an urban area, because she didn’t like to shop. In fact, when I got married, she couldn’t understand why I didn’t just order a wedding dress from the JCPenney catalog …</p>
<p>I remember my mom collecting Blue Chip Stamps. I don’t know if we had green stamps here.</p>
<p>Two things fit this description for me. One is the wooden cutting board I made for my parents in wood shop in junior high in 1962. I normally use the newer synthetic ones we have acquired over the since their death. But, when I need a really large surface I pull the old one out and, yes, there is a flashback to gifting it to them all new, sanded and oiled.</p>
<p>The other thing is the 4 bowl (pyrex) mixing bowl set in red, blue, green and yellow that I kept when I cleaned out my parents’ house after mom died in 1990. These were the bowls that my dad made homemade pimento cheese, his “famous” BBQ sauce and shrimp sauce in. It takes me back to when I’d watch and ask to grate the cheese in the 1950s.</p>
<p>I have those Pyrex mixing bowls, 07DAD! My mother used them all the time when I was a kid. I appropriated them when I moved out of the house into my own apartment many years ago. :)</p>
<p>I loved putting the green stamps in the books when I was a child. Don’t recall at all the things my mom got with them. :(</p>
<p>We never had the colored Pyrex bowls when I was a kid, we had white ones with blue chickens (or something) on the side. I always wanted those colored ones, so have collected them as an adult. I love them! I still use them almost every day, even though they don’t go in the dishwasher and they weigh a lot.</p>
<p>We had the Pyrex bowls and my dd has two of the surviving ones now. We bought a croquet set with S & H stamps. It was an exciting time. I would love to time travel back for a day or two!</p>
<p>emilybee - I agree! In my family, it was an honor to be selected to put the green stamps in a book! One of my sisters never put the stamps in straight…used to drive us crazy.</p>
<p>My family also had the same set of Pyrex mixing bowls and for unknown reasons they never made it to my house after I cleaned out my parent’s apartment… now I wonder what ever happened to them.</p>
<p>07Dad - My grandparents big yellow bowl survived to live in my kitchen until broken last year. (The guilty kids hid the evidence hoping I’d never notice). I remember the aqua and pink ones.</p>
<p>That reminds me (dating myself), I have some of my mother’s depression glass, translucent plates and bowls given away for free at movie theaters and in cereal boxes. I also have an ancient bronze mortar and pestle from my grandparents, but now I’m in danger of turning this thread into the Antiques Roadshow.</p>
<p>anyone else order from the Spiegel catalog?</p>