Pluggers by Rick McKee for August 13, 2021

If something like that is on your tee shirt, you’re a hipster.

The closest thing I have is a Seattle SuperSonics visor.

Well, it’s just gotten worn in. They made them better then.

Pluggers wear those hats in memory of stores that sold SOLID merchandise that was made with care and built to last.

Plugger history lesson ! Wearable .

If I ever changes my profile picture, I is going to use the one above.

Hawaii????

Or from a NASCAR team that’s been defunct or driver retired for 20 years.

“Monkey Wards”, I still have a freezer bought from there in “98”. Defrost @ once a year and it works like a Timex.

I worked there!

My favorite hat qualifies. The company has been out of business so long, there’s no mention of it on the Internet.

Went to Sears first. If they didn’t have it, went to Wards.

I’ve got a large box of them.

Got my first guitar in 1967 from Montgomery Wards for $17, “Airline” model. The pick guard was painted on. Very fat neck, horrible, but that’s what I played for the next 5 years.

Also if your favorite is business no one has ever heard of.

I found a Where’s the beef? cap

I have a couple from sports franchises that no longer exist.

We live in an economy that survives because we buy, buy, buy. Way back (before WWII) emphasis was on saving, reusing, repairing, getting ‘our money’s worth’ out of everything we bought. Our work force used to be heavily agricultural and manufacturing and a lot of occupations did not require additional training beyond high school. Even people who couldn’t go to college, etc. could find jobs that were steady and could support a small family. During the war, things focused on what was necessary to win the war — changes in manufacturing, food stamps, scrimping — everything went toward the war effort. After the war, to get things back on track, emphasis was on buying — not just by the people celebrating the end of the war and finally able to get the goods they needed/wanted; but also by government officials and businesses wanting things to get back to normal. Television provided a new medium for enticing ads and people discovered all sorts of things that were available. Buy, Baby, Buy. Credit cards came in in the 50s and people learned that they could postpone payment on even small purchases . . . Now we have an economy that has little agricultural employment (1.9% of the labor force), little manufacturing, a lot of automation, and very few good paying jobs that don’t require a lot of extra education or training. We need to buy stuff to keep the economy going but we are increasingly getting a population that really can’t afford to that. So we have to produce/purchase cheaply or badly made goods so that we can continue to buy replacements so their producers can keep producing . . . How does it feel to be valued as a consumer rather than as a person?

When I was growing up, I dreamed of owning the Riverside motorcycle I saw in the Monkey Ward Store: http://piston.com/historical/mward.html

I went to visit my Dad in Texas. He’d just come back from a farm machinery trade show. I had to take three caps from the big box he offered me – just to be polite.

I really regret having somehow lost a cap from my brother’s small excavating business. It disappeared the last time I moved. He doesn’t have any left to give me a replacement. :’-(

I had a pack of cards “Grey’s Drug Store 50 years of service” or something like that. Remember Grey’s?