The relentless downpour of pre-holiday catalogs has slowed to a trickle. And, since I’m not in purchasing mode right now, most of them come in and go out unread. But one from The Vermont Country Store found its way into my office.
Looking for something to do to avoid tackling my To Do List, I opened it. Now most catalogs have some sort of a general theme to entice the buyer. Harry and David® offer fruit, Williams-Sonoma® offers kitchenware, Lillian Vernon® offers cheap.
The Vermont Country Store offers nostalgia.
My dictionary defines nostalgia as “a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life.” Leafing through the catalog, I did enjoy becoming reacquainted with such items as Walnettos and Aunt Jemima’s Easy-Bake Coffee Cake.
As a young child, Walnettos, a caramel with nuts, were part of my after-church-on-Sunday visit to the candy store. So was Valomilk, which isn’t a milk product at all. It’s more like today’s Reese’s® Peanut Butter Cup, only filled with gooey white crиme in the center.
The coffeecake intrigued me as a young teen because the dry ingredients came in a bag with its own disposable baking pan too. You added the specified egg and water to the bag. When everything was mixed, you poured the contents into the semi-rigid baking pan, put it in the oven, and ate it half an hour later. Besides providing an after-school snack, Aunt Jemima made me feel like a great cook.
Then there was the shampoo you used without water. Called Pssssssst®, it was supposed to tide your mom or grandma over between beauty shop appointments. Dippity-do® was a precursor to today’s gels, mousses, sprays, and aerosols that keep every hair in place. Other pages revealed the first Green Goddess dressing, a genuine oilcloth just like my Mother had on our kitchen table, an old fashioned enamel breadbox, a manually operated meat grinder, and that once popular fragrance, “Evening in Paris,” in its original bottle.
It was definitely a nostalgic few minutes, but I drew the line at actually wishing to physically return to those early years. In fact, I didn’t order a single item.
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