My Fingerprints Were in More Homes Than Any Burglar in the Country

My very first job in Chicago, when I was in high school in the early sixties, was at the Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex. Not just any building, it covered more than three million square feet and was considered one of the largest commercial facilities in the world.

I was sixteen, saving up for my first car, so I worked hard to earn every bonus they offered. My job was on the assembly line, where I weighed packages and added postage to orders shipped to customers all over the country. We earned bonuses for exceeding the daily quota, and I earned bonuses daily, because I never left my cubicle. Not for breaks. Not for fresh air. Not for anything. While my coworkers stretched their legs and socialized like normal human beings, I was hunched over my comptometer like a little miser, eating potato chips straight from the bag and punching in numbers without missing a beat. The potato chips, as it turned out, were a problem.

My comptometer keys were permanently greasy. So were my fingers. When it came time to fold that greasy bill, slip it into the package, tape it up, and send it down the chute, one could say my fingerprints were in more homes than any burglar in the country. I’ve often wondered what some unsuspecting customer in Iowa thought when they opened their Sears order and found their receipt covered in mysterious smudges.

I had a personal connection to that famous catalog, though we never called it the “Big Book.” We called it the Farmers’ Bible. Growing up on my grandparents’ farm in southern Illinois, I saw the Sears catalog as practically a member of the family. Grandma always looked forward to its arrival in the mailbox, and we children would gather around the table whenever a package came, feeling like it was Christmas even though the contents were almost never for us. Mostly socks, underwear, work clothes, bedding, and towels. The catalog carried a full array of tools, but Grandpa never ordered any. He would hold up something he’d bought at a yard sale for thirty-five cents and quietly declare, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

Many people would be surprised to learn that the Sears Catalog carried everything from wedding rings to live bees. They even sold the Heidelberg Electric Belt, a cure-all for what was politely called “sexual weakness.” Early catalogs also offered opium-based medicines. It was truly a one-stop shop for everyone. You could order a house, a husband’s ring, a hive of bees, and a little something for your nerves, all from the same dog-eared pages. And when the new catalog arrived, the old one retired to the outhouse, where it finally received the most honest reviews of its career and served the most essential job of all time.

And here I was, years later, on the other end of that Wish Book pipeline, sending those dreams to other farm tables, one greasy receipt at a time.

Speaking of wishes, be careful what you wish for.

When I finally saved enough money, I marched down to a used car lot with stars in my eyes and two hundred dollars in my pocket. That car dealer saw me coming from a mile away. He sold me a real dinger, a Chevrolet Corvair, for exactly two hundred dollars. It had a rear-engine layout and an extremely short three-speed gear shift mounted on the dashboard. It was like driving a toy car. I was thrilled, right up until I discovered it had severe steering problems and was prone to rolling over during sharp turns.

No wonder it was only two hundred dollars.

My Corvair was short-lived. I was not about to roll myself into a ditch on the way to the Chicago Bandstand after school. Some social lives are worth protecting.

So there you have it, my brief but glorious career at one of the twentieth century’s great retail empires, launching packages into the American heartland, one comptometer click at a time, and leaving my fingerprints in mailboxes from coast to coast. Grandma would have been proud.