Gather ’round, kiddies, and your ol’ Uncle Burtie will tell you about how we survived in the ancient days before Amazon.

Oh, yes, it’s true, there was a time before Prime and FedEx trucks roamed the land. I was there.

I also remember when there was no such thing as the Super Bowl, Snoop Dogg or Google. Seriously.

Back in those dark days — well, not really dark because we spent a lot more time playing outdoors in the sunshine — instead of scrolling through screens and screens of shopping options, we licked sheets and sheets of S&H Green Stamps.

I swear that I am not making this up.

The factory paid Dad every other Friday. Every other Saturday, Dad drove Mom to Loblaws, where she crammed a cart full of enough groceries in a vain attempt to stay ahead of the appetites of three growing boys and a baby girl.

When the cashier finished ringing up the damages, Mom handed over the cash, and the cashier handed back a ribbon of receipt and a corresponding amount of S&H Green Stamps.

(Kids, did you notice that I said Mom handed over cash? We didn’t have debit cards in those days, and credit cards were frowned upon — especially by Dad.)

After we helped lug the bags of groceries into the house, we boys would fight over the chance to lick the stamps and paste them into collection booklets.

And — here’s the cool part — you could trade in filled books of stamps for things like dish towels (or toys), chairs (or toys), appliances or — my preference — toys. There was a whole catalog of trading stamp premiums from which to drool over and choose. It was like the Sears Christmas Wishbook for adults–but we kids were happy to act as advisers.

When you filled all the pages of enough booklets with trading stamps, you toted your bundle to a redemption center — which was like the North Pole, only closer — and swap them for marvelous stuff.

Mom, in my opinion, wasted too many stamps on things like bedsheets and waffle irons and not enough on bicycles and footballs.

But what she did NOT waste her trading stamps on was dinnerware. That came from gas stations.

You see, children, back in those days, gas stations constantly offered drinking glasses (made with real glass) or fine china (I don’t know the plates and bowls were made with real china, but they sure shattered if you clobbered your brother with one) or utensils, one piece at a time, free with a minimum purchase of eight gallons of gasoline.

I’m not kidding. Look it up in your set of encyclopedias. What? Oh. You’ve never heard of an encyclopedia? Well, then… Google it.

Kids!

Anyway, when Dad pulled up to the gas pumps, which rang the service bell inside, the attendant would scurry out, pump his gas, clean the windshield, check the oil, and — after Dad handed over the cash for the gas — hand Mom the next piece for the family dinnerware collection.

Has your Amazon or DoorDash driver ever checked your oil or cleaned your windshield? I thought not. And yet you mock me about the backward times of my youth. Ha!

I begged our favorite service station attendant, a burly guy named Ringo, to give away spy glasses or chemistry sets or squirt guns or anything else that would be useful instead of more dinner plates and serving spoons. He ruffled my hair and shook his head, sadly, I thought.

But he was right, kids. I already had a solid source for new toys — they were free inside cereal boxes. Or in the case of music, real live records were free ON the box.

Who needed Amazon to deliver music to your door when you already had Super Sugar Smacks in the cupboard.

The record player, of course, came from S&H Green Stamps.

Trade tales with Burt of riding dinosaurs to school at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.