Wish Books: Residents Go Down Memory Lane in the Pages of Sears Catalogs

It’s late fall, the mid-1950’s, an early cold front has brought snow flurries and sharp wind to the region.

A group of little girls huddle at a front window of an old farmhouse waiting for the mailman to stop.

This certainly has to be the day that it arrives. It’s been anticipated for so long. And arrive it does, the latest edition of the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog.

It was filled with a cornucopia of wonderfulness that, for the little girls, would never find its way to their house, but it was so much fun just to look and dream.

This scenario unfolded in thousands of homes each Christmas season for more than 50 years and even after all this time, mention the “Wish Book” as it became known, and people chuckle with sweet memories.

“I would ponder it, I would make a list, I was always wanting dolls,” said Lissa Long of Cherry Street, Roaring Spring. “And I always liked the craft section.”

Her favorite were the knitting machines, while for some of us the idea that a little girl could have her own kitchen with an oven, was beyond the realm of possibilities.

Long, a native of Bakers Summit, shared the coveted Christmas catalog with her sister Lynn Reed, now of Duncansville, who recalls a Christmas catalog from Montgomery Wards arriving at the house.

“We called it ‘Monkey Wards,’ and there was one from J.C. Penney,” Reed said.

The mail order business, which in 1933 led to the first Wish Book, started in 1883, according to information by the History Channel. And it was all due to the railroad and the need for an organized approach to train station schedules.

The history experts tell us that in 1868, the construction of the 2,000-mile-long transcontinental railroad was speeding across the Midwest at a rate faster than train operators could manage.

Five railroad lines linked the East Coast to the west resulting in a revolution to the way people moved about and causing thousands of new towns to spring up along the lines.

Time was always determined by the sun resulting in 8,000 different time zones along the massive number of railroad miles creating a nightmare to schedule departure times.

In 1883, the government instituted standard time and reduced the massive nation to four time zones, but the one million workers of the railroads still struggled with time issues.

Enter Richard Sears, a 23-year old-station master living in Minnesota.

In a brilliant entrepreneurial move, Sears bought up 2,500 pocket watches and using the railroad communications system, offered them for sale to other station masters.

Within a half year, all of the watches had been purchased, generating for Sears a profit 10 times that which he earned working for the railroad.

Sears began offering more and more merchandise to anyone he could reach and within a decade, he was producing and circulating a 700-page catalog, generating 35,000 orders per day of everything from clothing to refrigerators and pianos.

In one year, Sears sold 100,000 sewing machines to homemakers nationwide eager to ease the burden of clothing their families.

Today’s Internet offers for sale past years of the catalog whose cover carried soothing, inviting graphics of small children peaking at Santa or giant pictures of the jolly fat guy surrounded by a laundry list of toys.

By the 1950s, Sears Christmas book offered more than 200 pages of merchandise.

The catalog came out each Christmas until 2011, then once again in 2017. Now it’s available online.

Don Grabill of Martinsburg, now eight decades plus in age, said any Sears catalog was a lot of fun.

“I can still picture some of the ads,” he said. “I know you could even buy a house out of them.”

Estimates are that 70,000 to 75,000 of these house kits were sold from 1908 to 1940. Of that number, 70 percent of the houses are still standing.

A basic two-story house, which included floor plans and the materials, was going for as little as $1,152.

The earliest models, between 1908 and 1914, could be purchased for as little as $708.

Termed “bungalows in a box,” the Chicago-based Sears shipped them by rail to all points in the 48 contiguous states with some making it as far as Alaska.

But for Grabill and Roaring Spring resident Larry Curfman, the memories of the Christmas book turn to more practical uses.

“We had an outhouse when I was a kid and we usually took the catalog to the outhouse,” Curfman said of the ultimate recycling.

But it also provided something to look out during the stay, he said.

“I know this much, they always went to the outhouse,” said Grabill.