Catalogue put to good use

Posted Feb 23, 2012 By Mary Cook

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EMC Lifestyle -"Any day now," Audrey said, peeking into the mailbox at the end of our long winding lane.

For days, walking home from the Northcote School with anticipation, Audrey checked the mailbox. It was yet to appear. "What's taking it so long?" I wanted to know.

"Don't be so impatient. It will be here in its own good time."

What we were waiting for was the new issue of Eaton's catalogue. As regular as clockwork as the seasons changed, we could count on it arriving by mail. The last copy was thickened from constant page turning and it would await its fate as soon as the newest edition came into the house.

Finally it was there, crammed into the tin mailbox. Audrey and I ran all the way home through hardened snow, through the bush, never stopping until we reached the kitchen door. My sister wouldn't let me carry it, not even for a few feet in case I dropped it and got it wet.

Mother was as excited as we were and even though she was preparing supper, she stopped long enough to take a look at the cover and ordered us to wash our hands before we got down to the real job of looking it over.

"Just put it over there on the top of the ice box until you have readied up the kitchen," she said.

Supper was a hurried meal that night. After all, great things loomed ahead! Audrey and I had the kitchen readied up in jig time with the oil cloth-covered table wiped and then dried with a clean flour bag tea towel to make sure it was perfectly dry. After all, it would never do to get a spot on the catalogue when it was this new!

REAL PAGE TURNER

The coal oil lamp was lit and moved to the centre of the table and Audrey and I took our places on the long bench against the back wall.

Audrey always appointed herself the page-turner. She accused me of crimping the corners and goodness knows the catalogue had to serve us until the next one came out months later.

My sister and I had this game we played with the Eaton's catalogue. We could each pick one thing off each page and we took turns picking first, allowing ourselves only 10 pages a night. If Audrey hadn't put a limit on our pastime, we would have gone through the entire catalogue in less than a week.

And so we started at the women's fashions and even though there wasn't a hope in Hades of our ever having one item we picked, we scanned each page as if our choice was a matter of life and death.

It was amazing how we could spend the best part of an entire evening just going through those 10 pages and making our choices.

Then Audrey would take the 12-inch ruler and tuck it into the page we had left off, close the catalogue and either pass it over to Mother or gently put it up on top of the ice box until the next night.

The brothers were never too interested in the new catalogue. Neither was Father. He said anything he needed he could get either at Briscoe's General Store or at Thacker's garage.