Saturday, November 12, 2022

The eagle has landed

When I was a little girl, we lived in a tiny town outside of Buffalo, New York called Clarence Center. My mother, like most suburban mothers in the 1960s, was a collector of S&H green stamps, which was a rewards program offered by many grocery stores at the time. The stamps were pasted into books provided by stores, and later redeemed for products selected from a catalog.


Anyone remember this logo?

Anyway, sometime in the mid-60s, one of the products my mother selected for the appropriate amount of stamps was an eagle. It was solid metal and had a gold finish. My parents hung that eagle in the house for years. It was part of my childhood.

Last April, my parents shipped me a box of items, including the eagle.

We kept the eagle displayed on the wood cookstove (which was not in use at the time) until yesterday, when Don mounted it in the perfect location: Over the deck doors.

It required molly screws, since there were no convenient studs in the wall in that spot.

Once mounted, it brought back such memories! The eagle has a new home.

As far as I'm concerned, the eagle has landed. I'm proud to carry it onward.

16 comments:

  1. I can remember driving past their Chicago headquarters building. It was at the junction of two freeways and I was surprised at how small the building was. This was in the late 1960's.

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  2. Well you reminded me of a stack I had saved back years ago, got a new job away from where they awarded them, and forgot about the stack. The sad thing is, they were good until a few years ago. Now they're just trash. So when I get around to cleaning that cabinet out this winter (I want to put storage shelves in that place), I'll know to just toss them. Sigh.
    I like your eagle!

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  3. I remember my young son occupying himself for long periods of time with the S&H and Sears catalogues.

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  4. I remember my young son spending long periods of time on the sofa with the S&H and Sears catalogues.

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  5. growing up in California, we had Blue chip stamps. My mom would give me the singles and she would keep the '5s'. LOL. I fondly remember filling up those books and then taking my books and going to redeem them. SJ now from California

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  6. Hang it an inch or two lower. It will look better.

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  7. My wife worked at the S&H store in Rochester NY in the 60’s. We have the same Eagle in our den guarding a piano top full of family pictures, with her father’s veteran’s burial flag.

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  8. I remember those stamps!
    XaLynn

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  9. Long ago when the world was new, my father owned a fairly prosperous Chinese restaurant. We bought all the meat for the restaurant from a King Soopers supermarket [now Kroger] in the same shopping center. Which meant we got a LOT of the S&H green stamps. One of my occasional chores was to paste them into the books. I was really glad when they came out with the 10 stamp denomination.

    Subotai Bahadur

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  10. What a wonderful memory for your walls to hold! I still have a partial book of Green Stamps, but will not toss them. They are worth money as ephemera.

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  11. Wow! Mom passed away in May of this year and My pride and Joy from Boots and Pop's place this their Eagle from "Blue Chip Stamps books". Blue Chip stamps must have been a West coast thing. My eagle landed over the piano where his watched over music for almost 65 years. While my eagle is some kind of plastic, he has a metallic bronze finish and is holding a stars and stripes shield and flag and looks to be the same size as yours. I had told mom (Boots) that I wanted him, and she laughed saying she got it from 'the stamps'. Somethings have 'warm and cozy' attached to them, and my eagle is one of them. Thanks for letting me share.

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  12. I had that very same eagle mounted above the entryway to my kitchen years ago.

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  13. Wow! You grew up not far from where I began! Youngstown, Lewiston, Ransomville (my grandparents owned a huge dairy/produce farm there). Than Niagara Falls, Town of Niagara, Lockport, Buffalo (Hertel and Colvin area) and finally Rochester in the late 60's. My Dad was a cookware salesman. My mom had a ton of those S&H green stamp books. With 7 children, we went thru a lot of groceries. Thank you for the memory.

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  14. Hi! Former Red Devil here! What a blast from the past post! :)

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  15. Yes, that brings back memories for me too. I grew up on Long Island NY, I was a kid in the sixties and we all contributed time helping my mother filling in those books. We then would take a ride to the town six miles away where we redeemed them for all sorts of stuff. To tell the truth though, I cant remember a single thing we had gotten from the stamps, but they are still a fond memory from a really great era that I miss so much now.

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