Mail Order Isn’t What It Used To Be

28Jul/090

Mail Order Isn’t What It Used To Be

I love it that I can order something from Amazon and generally have it the next day. The internet has made casual consumerism into something as natural as breathing.

By way of background, I'm currently on vacation, and one of the things I enjoy doing on vacation is reading about quirky history. This year's entry in the quirky history category is T.C. Boyle's The Road to Wellville, which is centered on John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanatarium in 1907. A commenter on Skepchick aimed me at the book, and within a space of about 14 hours, I'd ordered and received it courtesy of Amazon via my ever-reliable UPS driver. During that time I could keep track of its progress at each UPS transition point.

I can remember my brother and I, when I was maybe 7, talking my mom and dad into ordering us some toy Batman utility belts from an ad in a comic book. Back then, the standard mail order cycle was to fill out a paper order blank, mail in a check, wait about 2 weeks for the check to clear, wait another 2 weeks for the order to process, and sometime 6 to 8 weeks later a package appeared on the front porch. No tracking, no notification of impending arrival, nothing.

We used to get all manner of catalogs for mail order goods. One, for the Johnson Smith Company, sold all manner of oddities, including "working" laser and phaser plans. Others were more conventional catalogs for well known stores. The annual Service Merchandise catalog was always a hit, and provided visual aids for many a Christmas list. The Sears catalog was also a welcome item - mainly because for several years in the late 1970's and early 1980's, Sears carried a special set of Sears-only Star Wars toys.

This brings me back to The Road to Wellville. Early in the book, we meet Will Lightbody, a well-off New Yorker on his way to Kellogg's Sanatorium. Lightbody has been going through some rough times, including a bout of alcoholism. His wife, consulting the ever-handy Sears catalog, makes a purchase of White Star Secret Liquor Cure¹, a patent medicine marketed at the long-suffering housewife who wants her husband to lay off the booze. 5 drops of this amazing concoction in his coffee after dinner, and he'd basically pass out for the evening, putting an end to all those pesky runs to the tavern. The magic ingredient? Opium. Yes. Opium. The same stuff that'll get you jail time now was for sale to housewives in 1907. From Sears. Through the mail.²

CB
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¹The link goes to a Google Books result. Not quite what I wanted, since it's hard to read. I'll keep looking.

²Not wanting to miss out on both sides of an opportunity, I suppose, Sears also sold White Star Secret Narcotic Cure, the secret ingredient of which was alcohol...

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