A friend was just talking to me about some things she had bought at the Sears store near her that was closing. We got to talking about what the Sears Catalogue meant to us when we were kids. She was a poor country girl on a farm in New Jersey, I was a poor city girl in a row house in Philadelphia, and we both dreamed over the Sears Catalogue, a cornucopia of desirable objects - a true picture of the Material Culture of our times.
The Sears Catalogue was first printed in 1883 and last printed in 1993 - one hundred years. My parents were devote Sears purchasers. We all researched in the catalogue and we shopped in Sears stores, I shopped in one as recently as about 5 years ago to buy my washer and dryer.
It is another icon of my childhood being erased by time. I miss the old catalogue and like many, I wish I had kept one. It is a constant struggle, however, to decide what to hold on to and what to let go of and if you hold on to too much, you drown in stuff and become a hoarder. I have had to think of stuff as a stream, constantly flowing by, nourishing with what it brings, but always on the move. And you don't want it overflowing its banks and flooding your home. It has to keep moving along.
I wonder, though, what old Sears Catalogues are selling for and surely the antique shops I haunt must carry one or two.
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