Here is a Pastime from my childhood of families like mine collecting everyday dishware sets at local service stations, grocery stores or with the amassing of those coveted “green stamps.”
I can recall when the Gulf Station gave away Ironstone – a name brand dishware set for faithful patrons at its stations.
If you, for instance, bought five gallons (or more) of gas, the attendant would tell you for another $1 you could own the dinner plate, dessert plate, or tea cup and saucer.
In paying the bill, add the $1 and the boxed set of dishware, was handed over to the customer. Drive away with gasoline and a plate for a future dinner.
Many of the older teen aged girls and their moms were taking advantage of this special in collecting the daughter an “everyday” set of dishes for her future.
The Mad Butcher Grocery was also a major player in the dish market.
For a grocery bill of over $20, one could select from the weekly offering of some very nice, blue and white historically themed dinner plates, collecting the full set of 10 different New England or Colonial themed dishes.
The $1 per plate was, of course, added to the grocery bill. The new plate, saucer, cut and dessert plate, were bagged along with the local groceries and then carried out to your car by a young attendant at the Mad Butcher.
It was, along with working at the Kroger Store, across from what was then the Warren Junior High (today the U.S. Post office), one of the absolute best jobs in town.
In collecting these plates, cups, saucers, bowls and dessert plates, there was always a “time element” the promotion was always moving right along and if one dragged their feet or hesitated a single week from taking on the weekly special – well one would miss out.
Sharp eyed cashiers or checkers as we knew them, that long line of ladies who stood all day every day behind the cash registers of the grocery stores – knew by their conversations to alter the shoppers when these deals were running out. If you were trying to collect, say, a dozen plate settings, you didn’t want to be short two dinner plates and have 14 salad plates or tea sets.
The saving grace in all these on-site promotions were the collection of another promotion done by service stations and groceries around Warren, the “green stamps.”
These S&H Green Stamps were the ultimate in free stuff. You bought $30 worth of groceries or gas and you got an equal amount of S&H Green Stamps to equal your purchase.
You took these stamps home and licked the back of the bright green stamps and pasted them into a free stamp book – provided by the retailer.
There were about 1,200 S&H Green Stamps (valued at one cent par value per stamp or worth about $12.00 per book when filled).
The redemption of the S&H Green Stamps could be made via the mail or by traveling to a S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center (one was in the brand spanking new Jefferson Mall in Pine Bluff).
The store was a lot like the Sears outlet on Warren’s Main Street. It was a catalogue store – where you choose items from a printed catalogue – redeemed your stamps and the item would be shipped to you – or if it was a big item – you could return to the S&H Green Stamp store and pick it up.
I knew a neighboring family that once got a recliner from the S&H Green Stamp Store.
The S&H Green Stamp Store had lots of fun stuff to order like toys, baseball bats and other things for children, but also irons, steamers and ironing boards for the lady of the house.
It’s been a while since there has been a full-service gas station in Warren, where someone would fill your tank and also promote the latest in dinnerware available for just $1 more.
These are Pastimes long ago of sales promotions and S&H Green Stamps long since turned to memories.