Sears, Bezos, Roebuck, and Trump

I really like popcorn…

In our heart of hearts, each of us must confess to at least one peculiar vice. For some of us, that irremediable weakness leads to prison --  or the presidency. For others, just mild social approbation or a tendency to put on weight. In my case, strolling into a saloon and catching a whiff of fresh-popped Jolly Time liberally salted and doused with faux dairy fat pretty much guarantees an extended stay, and, if the product is generously provided, return visits. I’ll be the one to judge the quality of a film less on cinematography and directorial genius than the freshness and relative oil-content of super-size bucket at the Cinema 7 snack bar. I’m the guy strolling the carnival munching a two-bushel bag of kettle corn.

Yeah, I really like popcorn. So needless to say when I came across a commercial popcorn machine at a yard sale price I snapped it up and promptly installed it in in my kitchen.

Now professional grade popcorn demands professional grad fixin’s, but the bad-for-ya-stuff that makes it taste so good just isn’t kept in stock at the local food mart – save perhaps in containers of miniscule quantity retailing at maxiscule prices. Once upon a time this would have posed a near irresolvable dilemma, but thanks to Jeff Bezos, with a few keystrokes and a credit card number all I need to scent my surroundings like a cineplex or saloon are delivered directly to my door -- with two-day shipping included with Amazon Prime.

But that’s not the end of it. Doing a simple search while sitting on my sofa I’ve located replacement lids for Pyrex leftover containers, an obsolete power supply for an obsolete computer, and “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”. With the aid of Fed Ex, UPS, and the United States Postal Service my front porch has become a world-wide retail emporium. If I need it, odds are I needn’t leave home to get it.

At least until Capt. Piccard’s replicator hits the market, when it comes to getting stuff not in stock at the corner store, Amazon’s the best thing we’ve got going.

No matter what The Donald tweets.

As of late it seems like our easily irritated chief executive has become annoyed with the online retailer. Now I don’t know if it’s because he’s just jealous that Mr. Bezos is richer than he is or if he’s afraid that all those packages the post office is delivering on time and at a profit might make folks reconsider draining the swamp, but he’s ordered a special investigation into whether Amazon is misusing the mails.

In other words Amazon’s getting the business for giving the USPS too much business…

Somebody in the White House seems to think this is a new thing.

I have two words for him – Sears & Roebuck.

To which I might add Spiegel, Wards, and Penney’s

Mom called ‘em “wish books,” because we’d page through them and wish we could afford all the stuff they offered for sale. Inches thick, printed on Bible-page thin paper they were compendiums of all worldly goods, bound in paperback and piled one on the other to provide many a youngster with an impromptu booster seat at Grandma’s Thanksgiving table.

They were the Amazon of an earlier age; a slower tech version where orders were placed on the dotted line, with pen and ink, cross checked, double checked for size, quantity, description and order number before writing the check or enclosing cash, or even postage stamps in an earlier time, before slipping it in the mailbox with the red flag tipped up to alert the mail carrier that there was outgoing to be gotten. Then it was a two week or longer wait to find out if the shirt fit or the shoes had been ordered half a size too small.

After that, all we needed to do was build the internet and buy a computer.

Yeah, the more things change…