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LEARN HOW TO MAKE OUR TYPE LARGER

	Just a thought
	Betty Lammers

Green again
S&H Green Stamps return in their new digital form.
Published September/October 2000

Pasting them in books was a coveted assignment when we were kids. Our weekly grocery trip would yield a few strips of S&H Green Stamps, and the more products we’d buy, the more stamps we’d get.

When we had a bunch saved, the whole family would pore over the catalog and vote on desired items. What would we get? The ball-bearing roller skates? The Monopoly set?

No such luck. We’d usually wind up with a boring iron or a toaster, which suggests that our votes didn’t count near as much as our parents’ did.

But that didn’t take away from the excitement of pasting those stamps and being the one to finish a book. I remember the last two pages as the messy ones, where lonely singles and glueless rejects would gather to do their part.

After finishing our book, we’d pack the car and embark on a family trip to one of the nearby S&H (Sperry & Hutchinson) Redemption centers to pick up our shiny new appliance. Days long gone? Not quite.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a woman at my local supermarket signing people up for the new store courtesy card, which offers S&H Greenpoints – a slight twist on the traditional Green Stamps.

We’re now (supposedly) a paperless society, so the concept behind Greenpoints is this: with each dollar spent, you earn 10 points. You can track your points and redeem prizes at www.greenpoints.com on the Web.

The printed catalog I received offered everything from small items for just under 5000 points to a 7-day cruise for two for 749,000 points (airfare not included). That would take a lot of groceries and I don’t think there will be too many takers on that one.

What’s next, the return of “dish night at the movies” – that one day a week in which moviegoers earned a free dish with their 25-cent admission? See enough flicks, and you had your sparkling new dinner set. Today, with movie tickets costing $6-7, I don’t think it would fly. Some things are best left for nostalgia.

E-mail Betty Lammers at betty@homefrontmagazine.com.

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