What Do You Value?

Collecting S&H Green Stamps was a thing. Mom would get stamps at the grocery store or other businesses. Beside the cash register were boxes with a “telephone” dial and the cashier would dial up big and little green stamps associated with the amount that was purchased. The goal was to fill pages in a book, each page took 3 big green stamps or a whole side of little stamps to fill that page. These books of stamps could be traded for items from a catalog or at a store for mostly household items. Our little town had a Green Stamp store for a while and we got the coolest foldable metal TV trays. Mom was meticulous of collecting the stamps because they brought value to our house.

My wife and I were watching a movie and I saw this book of checks, and I said, “Remember Traveler’s Cheques?” The first thing is they weren’t checks; they were cheques. Pretty fancy. We’d have to go to the bank, and then trade our cash for Traveler’s Cheques. They came in a long plastic sleeve and they were used like cash but not sure they were actually any safer. Someone could steal my fancy cheques as easily as steal my cash. I don’t remember where we were traveling and I tried to use my fancy cheques, the cashier looked at me like I was from Outer Mongolia. “We don’t take those.” I also read that later there was widespread counterfeiting of cheques, so they had no value or lost their value with many retailers.

When I was a kid, I had a paper route. It was Sunday morning delivery of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune. It was when people wanted newspapers, made out of actual paper, thrown by young people who prayed it wouldn’t be -40 below zero on Sunday mornings.

The Tribune had a guy who would come to our school, park across the street, and he had a cartop carrier. He would pull out this board with lots of trinkets and worthless items (think Dave & Busters), but they were irresistible to young kids. If we sold a certain number of subscriptions, we would earn a worthless trinket, which was almost as cool as having cheques. But at the bottom of the board was a big goal that I wanted – a trip to Minneapolis.

I think I earned three trips to Minneapolis. One was a boating and skiing weekend at a lake near Minneapolis. Another was staying at a downtown hotel, pretty big stuff for a kid from small town South Dakota. About the only thing I remember is we got to go to the observation deck of the Foshay Tower. I may or may not have dropped some coins off the tower, because a big kid said they’d go deep into the hot asphalt below (big kids lie, by the way). Now the Foshay Tower melts into the Minneapolis skyline, overtaken by newer, bigger, more expansive buildings.

Two things now strike me. Why would people in small town South Dakota buy a Minnesota newspaper subscription from a goofy kid who wanted to go to Minneapolis? Why did I want to increase the length of my cold, snowy Sundays of dropping papers on doorsteps and inside screen doors? Why didn’t I just get a couple cool squirt guns from the dude with the cartop carrier and go on with my life? Because those trips had value to me.

What do you value?

Think about the things you valued in your life at ages 6, 16, 26, 36…66? Wow, they aren’t at all the same things at all.

Value PATIENCE, know your values may take some time to develop, only to change with age and life circumstances. Just like licking small green stamps to fill a book, sometimes we wait patiently for that reward down the road.

Value FANCY, don’t value what society or others value. Value things that are deep in your soul and mean something to you. People will deeply value things you couldn’t care less about. It’s because you value fancy.

Value BIG, value those things that can make a difference in the lives of others and make this a better world to live in. Think Foshay Tower, not squirt gun.

One thought on “What Do You Value?

  1. Clarity, Bruce…keep remembering. Capture thoughts, visualize the past (yup, even the smell of saliva on green stamps stuck onto paper for redemption), and focus on future days created from present and past. Our days are precious… even walking small town streets in -40 degrees, listening to the sharp “crunch” of snow that fell days before and will remain months later. Memories feed our souls , remind us how “we got through” other times and create resilience. Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Bruce. Blessings to you and Sharon.

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