Wish Books

Sometimes late at night I think and try to remember...things from a simpler time. I have not thought about "Wish Books" in years. I googled wish book..and low and behold there is a site with some of the old wish books..I really enjoyed my visit there. I was so excited I almost woke Far Guy up..but since he was sleeping like a big ole baby..I figured my discovery could wait until morning. He recalls the excitement that surrounded the arrival of the "Wish Book" ..he would look it over and then get out a sheet of paper and methodically write down everything he wanted, with the page number and description and everything. He said " I made it pretty simple for my parents to shop..I never thought about what would happen if they lost the piece of paper."

My brother and I would share "The Wish Book" ..the special catalogue that came out in the Fall, it was filled with toys and games and everything imaginable for Christmas. We would write our names by the things we wanted. Before you wrote your name by an item, you had to spend hours looking through the book and reading all the descriptions. I can remember telling my brother to write neatly and not scrawl his name all over everything.. Our "Wish Book" would end up without a front or back cover and all the pages would be dogeared. We kept them from one year to the next, they were stored in the front room closet, stacked neatly in the corner with all of the other catalogues..Sears, Pennys, Montgomery Wards and Spiegel regular editions .. none of which got nearly the attention that the Wish Book did..I believe that the wish book we got every Fall was from Sears. In later years we may have gotten one from Pennys too.. but by then we had another brother and a sister who we had to share with. There just were never quite enough wish books to go around. The were also lots of wishes that were made..it would have been impossible to make all those wishes come true.

I wonder what children today would do with a wish book..:)