Inside the Catalog
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(Unless otherwise noted, all images from 1900 Sears catalog)
(Unless otherwise noted, all images from 1900 Sears catalog)
"For a kid growing up on a dirt rural route in 'Sunbelt' South Georgia during the 1970s, it should come as no surprise that Sears, Roebuck & Co. and its mail-order catalogs played a major role in my early life. As an only child, I spent countless hours perusing the pages of my mother’s old back issues of the Wish Book and Fall Spectaculars and listening to my grandmother tell stories about how 'everything her family ever had was either made, grown or bought from the Sears, Roebuck.'" |
“As a child, I remember the Sears catalog. It was by far the thickest book in our house. It made a good doorstop or could be used to weigh down the lid on a box of baby opossums my dad brought home from a hunting trip... The Sears catalog was like a mirror. It said, Open me, child. Look into your heart, wish and want and believe." |
“A prized possession in the southern households where printed material was scarce and treasured was the Sears, Roebuck catalogue . . . outdated catalogues, when they were finally turned over to children, made coloring books or were cut up to make flimsy paper dolls that became, when acted out with dialogue and plot, whole families, communities, congregations in various states of dress and undress.” |
“Without that catalogue our childhood would have been radically different. The federal government ought to strike a medal for Sears, Roebuck company for sending all those catalogues to farming families, for bringing all that color and all that mystery and all that beauty into the lives of country people.” |
Browse through an excerpt of the 1899 catalog.
Student-composed flip book created through http://fliphtml5.com
Rachel Keifer, Emily McGovern, and Alayna Stepp
Word Count: 1199 |
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