I
wrote here
about the Wonders
of the Animal Kingdom album into which I pasted the stamps my Parents
had collected for me at the Jewel Food Store. I learned recently that grocery
chains throughout
North America participated in the promotion.
* * * * *
Verona, Wisconsin, May 2013. My
album is in fair shape; it rests in the bottom of the life
box. Although we finished assembling the album by
the time I was three years old, I enjoyed looking at it for many years. The
artwork was brilliant to a child's eye, and I often used the album as a
reference after Dad and I returned from our Sunday
visits to the zoo.
I've always enjoyed hobbies. A good hobby redirects me from my troubles and lets me concentrate on something engaging.
As a child, I had a short-lived hobby focused on learning about dinosaurs.
People who grew up in Suburban Chicago during the late 1950s and early 1960s may remember that the Jewel Food Store once offered a a dinosaur stamp promotion. Parents got a certain number of stamps for the dollars they spent at the grocery store. Children received a dinosaur album with spaces for pasting in the stamps; the idea was to collect all of the available stamps to fill up the entire album. That meant children encouraged parents to go to the Jewel often, and parents felt compelled to spend lots of money there.
I filled up my dinosaur album.
I still have the album, stashed in a basement box. I'll look for it later and snap a photo of it.
Today I knit. And I spend money at yarn stores.
Suburban Chicago, October, 1961. I sit in the Rec Room and admire my dinosaur album. Behind me, on the left, sits the doll from Poland that came out on special occasions. On the right is my plastic horse. My favorite toy—an aluminum coffee pot—balances on the armrest.
