JOY ALONG THE WAY: SHOPPING FOR THINGS I NEED NOT

Here come the gift catalogs, regular as calendars and seed catalogs at the first of the year. I understand that lots more people shop by mail nowadays. Perhaps that accounts for the plethora of these gift catalogs.

With congested traffic seemingly everywhere, parking spaces elusive, purse snatchers here, there and yonder, plus fear of crazies who love to thin crowds by bullets or bombs, one can understand why shopping by mail seems comfortable.

I welcome the gift catalogs, but not for the reasons you might think. I like to thumb through them and mentally list the things I have no need for, can do without, save space. I haven't quite got around to toting up the amount of money

I've saved by not ordering the apple peeler, that fake ceramic hamburger or those sponges cut in the shape of Winnie-the-Pooh, Apollo 13 or Big Foot's big foot, but I imagine it would be several hundred dollars and my life a lot simpler.

This attitude toward the deluge of modern gift catalogs is a far cry from that toward the old standby catalogs, Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.

We used to thumb through these catalogs and decide we needed everything in them from the huge balls of binder twine to the sheet music of "Blue Hawaii."

In defense of the latter attitude, I must say there wasn't a lot of frivolous things in the old and only catalogs. Things were needful, earthy, fundamental. Probably the most frivolous thing one could find was an ostrich plume. But if Mama or Grandma or countless other ladies had worn the same hat for five years, a new ostrich feather to fasten in the ribbon band was, well, at least a spirit lifter.

In one recent catalog there was an assortment of Christmas gift wrapped boxes. Nothing in the boxes! They were just to be placed under the Christmas tree or piled high here and there.

I hadn't' quite recovered from all the political campaign empty promises until here came this collection of empty gift wrapped boxes to make things look good and prosperous at Christmas time. Is there some connection there?

I felt sad for a while until the thought struck me that I could write the peddlers of these empty boxes and suggest that they put labels on them stating: "This box contains the Emperor's clothes." Get a smidgen of truth in it someway.

The modern gift catalogs never offer anything free. You could, through the old Sears catalog, order a wallpaper sample book. Best thing in the world from which to make valentines. In the back of the catalog there were several pages of little swatches of cloth so you could see and feel what the actual fabric for sale was like. Lou and I once meticulously sewed these samples together and had a beautiful little doll quilt. Think I want all this brought back? No. But it was a charming time.

Maybe in some future time we'll look on the era of Holiday Gift catalogs and wonder whatever became of them. Will they be out there in cyberspace where we can't turn the pages and revel in the fact that there are so many things we don't need?

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.