Pop Bottle to Pulp
Posted: June 17th, 2011, 9:27 pm
Reading Dave Gaughran's guest post over at Wicked and Tricksy's blog today reminded me of a childhood event I felt like sharing.
http://www.wickedtricksy.com
A Saturday June 1968, I mowed four lawns for a Lincoln each, delivered 100 evening edition newspapers later that afternoon, collected for weekly subscriber bills, and sold 20 newspapers door-to-door to transient lodgers for a daily net of another Lincoln. Weekly rake that week of near half a C-note.
Along the paper route, I came across a bawling girl my age walking her bike. She'd been selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door but had quit work in distress. I asked if she was okay. Her bike chain had come off the sprockets. She didn't know what to do about it. I fixed it and tightened up the fetch of the rear wheel so it wouldn't come off again. Yeah, I had a wrench on me.
My work day done about four p.m., it was time for a treat to spoil my dinner. Eight miles to the nearest geedunk store. No problem, I collected pop bottles along the way. Three dozen all told redeemed for a nickel apiece. Enough for a cold Coke, a couple candy bars, a pulp digest, and a buck to spare.
The magazine salesgirl came into the store. I asked if she'd had any more trouble. No. Thank you for helping. She counted out pennies and a few nickels at the counter, trying to decide between a soda pop and a handful of penny candy or a pulp digest. I treated her to all and a candy bar. She thanked me again. We drank our sodas and chatted at the parking lot curb about the door-to-door salesperson business. Then we went our separate ways.
We'd meet again the next Friday for dinner at her folks' house. They wanted to meet the newspaper deliverer who'd shown so much kindness to their daughter. We wouldn't meet again for another fifteen years at another dinner at her folks' house in a different city. That was it, never to meet again.
My point, as it were, is for a few minutes' bike ride I collected enough pop bottles to meet my immediate wants and then some. The digest entertained me for awhile. It cost 26 cents with tax: five pop bottles and a penny tax. It's what I call the pop bottle to pulp paradigm of marketing. Those days are long gone. Even in 1968 pulp digests were dying. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine down from a 1950s 350,000 monthly circulation high to a paltry few tens of thousands. Lower still now. The big three science fiction and fantasy digests down from a '50s high of a quarter million per issue to 10,000 or so each in recent years. These days, digital digests consider theirselves breakaway successes if they have 2,000 paying subscribers.
If the Internet could somehow reproduce the pop bottle to pulp paradigm, we'd have a Digital Digest Renaissance. Maybe it's in the aether, coming soon to a digital marketplace near you. Sorry, Amazon and the like don't quite do it for me yet.
http://www.wickedtricksy.com
A Saturday June 1968, I mowed four lawns for a Lincoln each, delivered 100 evening edition newspapers later that afternoon, collected for weekly subscriber bills, and sold 20 newspapers door-to-door to transient lodgers for a daily net of another Lincoln. Weekly rake that week of near half a C-note.
Along the paper route, I came across a bawling girl my age walking her bike. She'd been selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door but had quit work in distress. I asked if she was okay. Her bike chain had come off the sprockets. She didn't know what to do about it. I fixed it and tightened up the fetch of the rear wheel so it wouldn't come off again. Yeah, I had a wrench on me.
My work day done about four p.m., it was time for a treat to spoil my dinner. Eight miles to the nearest geedunk store. No problem, I collected pop bottles along the way. Three dozen all told redeemed for a nickel apiece. Enough for a cold Coke, a couple candy bars, a pulp digest, and a buck to spare.
The magazine salesgirl came into the store. I asked if she'd had any more trouble. No. Thank you for helping. She counted out pennies and a few nickels at the counter, trying to decide between a soda pop and a handful of penny candy or a pulp digest. I treated her to all and a candy bar. She thanked me again. We drank our sodas and chatted at the parking lot curb about the door-to-door salesperson business. Then we went our separate ways.
We'd meet again the next Friday for dinner at her folks' house. They wanted to meet the newspaper deliverer who'd shown so much kindness to their daughter. We wouldn't meet again for another fifteen years at another dinner at her folks' house in a different city. That was it, never to meet again.
My point, as it were, is for a few minutes' bike ride I collected enough pop bottles to meet my immediate wants and then some. The digest entertained me for awhile. It cost 26 cents with tax: five pop bottles and a penny tax. It's what I call the pop bottle to pulp paradigm of marketing. Those days are long gone. Even in 1968 pulp digests were dying. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine down from a 1950s 350,000 monthly circulation high to a paltry few tens of thousands. Lower still now. The big three science fiction and fantasy digests down from a '50s high of a quarter million per issue to 10,000 or so each in recent years. These days, digital digests consider theirselves breakaway successes if they have 2,000 paying subscribers.
If the Internet could somehow reproduce the pop bottle to pulp paradigm, we'd have a Digital Digest Renaissance. Maybe it's in the aether, coming soon to a digital marketplace near you. Sorry, Amazon and the like don't quite do it for me yet.