Saturday Night's All Right With Me

It's been a long time since I was in my teenage and young adult years and Friday and Saturday nights were the focus of my social calender. Now I look at my calendar as a very different thing. When do I go to the Chiropractor? When is the next national holiday that I can take? What's the lunar phase? What day of the week is it? But the days of Friday night and Saturday night dates or times out with friends to catch dinner and a movie are long behind me. I think that's a shame, at least in same ways.

The days of "How do I look" are long behind me now.

There was something exciting about looking forward to seeing friends for a social event. These were usually people that I knew from school classes or, occasionally co-workers. It could be a small group of two couples or as many as a group of twenty. Rarely it was a "true" date between two people only. We would see movies - midnight showings in the winter and the drive-in during the summer. Sometimes we would gather at the bowling alley or the pinball game parlor. Often we would just get together at one home or another, everyone bring a dish to share for dinner, and we would just talk and listen to music for hours.

There were good friends, good food, good music and good times. But then we grew up and/or graduated. We got jobs in scattered lands and nations and we scattered to the four winds. We stayed in touch, somewhat, and sometimes attended reunions or summer events that would pull some of us back together. But we were never all together again, there were always missing bodies.

There are the hard times when friends get back together.

Then the other type of gatherings started and those weren't as fun. These were for the funerals and wakes of close friends, their spouses, and with even more sadness, their children. Our group splinters more and shrinks more, but we still come together for important occasions, even travelling from far distances.

And we all look at our own children or grandchildren, depending on their ages, and see them getting excited about their Friday and Saturday nights out with their friends or on a date. I wonder...When did the magic leave? When did Friday and Saturday nights just become routine? When did the days that had held such cachet merely transformed into squares on a calendar? Maybe it's time to rediscover the magic again?

Customer Appreciation

Whatever has happened to customer appreciation? As someone who works in retail and owns a shop, I have to say that I appreciate every customer whether they spend less than $10 or more than $100. I make sure to thank each person and try to give top service to each one. Sometimes that's easier said than done, but I make the effort and so does my staff. But I was thinking back into the past this morning about things that used to exist that seem to have gone the way of the Dodo bird.

My mother collected Green Stamps. I remember her bringing out grocery bags full and we would sit down with bowls of water and cloths, wetting and pasting the stamps into full books. She would then go to the Green Stamps store and exchange the filled books for some household item. I think that she got a few table lamps, maybe some serving pieces (trays, gravy boats) and an alarm clock or two this way. But I was young and don't remember clearly what she got. I remember getting the stamps though. We got them at the grocer, the gas station, the drugstore, basically at most places that we shopped. It was one more way for Mom to save pennies.

We didn't have a lot of excess money when I was growing up. Mom collected

green stamps and also some of the others in this picture. But green

stamps were the real winner in her eyes.

Speaking of gas stations, at that time they were all full service. You would drive in and they would fill your tank, wash your windows and check your tires. You didn't have to ask them to, you didn't have to get out of your car, and you didn't have to drive your car to a different place in the lot to check your tire pressure. Service with a smile. The gas crisis of the 1970's coupled with economic downturns and increased pricing wars dictated the end of full service and the advent of self-service. Even Mom got to the point where she could pump her own gas, but she never liked the fact that she had to do it.

The neighborhood butcher and neighborhood pharmacy have given way to big box grocery stores and corporate pharmacies. Department stores have morphed into "store within a store" concepts. The "new" retail is a return to the old, smaller and more specialized store. But the location is now within the larger store. Once again we are re-inventing the wheel. Now if the big stores would re-learn the concept of true customer service, if they actually seemed to appreciate each customer walking through their doors, then maybe it would be fun to actually shop again instead of shopping at my computer screen and keyboard. Just saying.....