By: Don Martin
Re: Johnson Smith Catalogue

    T'other day we got a catalogue. Actually, we seem to get two or
three of the things daily, but this one was a little different.
"Things You Never Knew Existed" the cover proclaimed, with the
subtitle "and other items you can't possibly live without." I
suppose it was the subtitle that caught my interest, being one who
finds it very possible to live without all sorts of things that
others regard as essential. I started leafing through it.

    In seconds, I was back in my childhood, looking at stuff I
yearned for when I was in the fourth and fifth grades--tasteless
stuff, horrid stuff, fake stuff, like whoopie cushions, joy
buzzers, and the funny little thing that, when put in one's mouth,
was supposed to make it possible to "throw the voice".

    "I'll be damned!" I exclaimed to my wife, "this thing reads just
like an old Johnson Smith catalogue!"

    "What's a Johnson Smith catalogue," she wondered. Ann did not
grow up on the same side of the tracks--or even of the continent--as
I did, and she was certainly never a little boy to whom a squirting
nickel was a treasure beyond price.

    "Cheapo novelty stuff for kids," I replied, "carbide cannons,
practical jokes, magic tricks, marked cards, two-headed coins: that
sort of stuff. We used to send for them from little classifieds at
the rear of Popular Science. The prices were cheap, but usually
about ten cents more than we could afford. So was the
catalogue--cheap. Newsprint, smeary black ink, lots of type and
crude line drawings--always the same ones." The drawing for the
ventriloquist device showed a delivery man looking bewilderdly at a
trunk, from which emanated the exclamations, "LET ME OUT!", "HELP!",
and "GET ME OUTTA HERE!" while a small boy, with strangely puckered
lips, stood knowingly at one side.

    I read on, finding more stuff with the ten-year-old mind in
mind: fake cut fingers, realistic feet (in real pantlegs) that could
be dangled from the trunk of a car, and the world's smallest
harmonica. It was when I found the mold for making jello in the form
of a strikingly detailed, life-sized human brain that I was driven
to look at the return address on the book.

    "Jesus, Ann, it IS a Johnson Smith catalogue. Sometime during
the past half century, they appear to have discovered cheap color
printing!"

    This company, they indicate with pride on the cover, has been
around since 1914, and over the years they have never developed any
taste--they know where the money is to be made. Ya wanna clock that
looks like a cat with moving eyeballs and pendulum tail? They got
it! Or mebbe ya wanna 'larm clock that sports an Apache AH-64
helicopter: it awakens you with whirling rotors, flashing lights,
and gunfire sound effects. They got it! You want an original lava
light? They got it! And much, much more.

    They have branched out since the days of my youth. They always
pitched to the gullible--ten-year-olds really do believe that they
can learn to throw their voices--and to those who would prey upon the
gullibility of others: squirting coins and joy buzzers invite one to
violate trust. They have gone a step further than those trifles:
amongst the ordinary schlock, there are now things like "Formula for
successful prayer", "Lord's Prayer Cross", UFO books, "Black
Helicopters over America" (a book), "Talking Horoscope Alarm Clock"
(which must be seen to be believed), The "Alien Autopsy" video,
"Magnetic Copper Bracelet" and other health aids, etc., etc., etc.

    The whole thing is hilarious, and they are proud of it. You will
be happy to know that the March of Progress has not left Johnson
Smith behind--they now have an _electric_ whoopie cushion.

... Through a Jaundiced Eye Darkly--Rheum With a View
              (don@balt-rehab.med.va.gov)

--- IM2.29+/FE1.45a+/PB2.12+
 * Origin: Xtians are uncomplicated beings: pure and simpleton. (1:109/601)