Mail Order Monday: Burton By Post

Mail order was my birthright as a kid. Sears and JC Penny? Mere amateurs. Sometime in the late '60s, just after the Whole Earth Catalog made its splash, an understated book came out called, The International Catalog of Catalogs. It was nothing more than the world's best catalogs in one book.

Segmented by product type, like cooking or camping or apparel, it might have included the UK's version of Sears, Burton By Post as seen above. The magic of international mail order was not so much in the ordering but in the dreaming. That, and it was an insight into a country. The difference in clothes, cameras, slippers and underwear. It was an amazing trip to take.

I miss that. I know I have the world at my finger tips via the Web but it isn't the same. In a catalog, there was a story. I don't care if it was intended or not. It was there and I was a part of it. I was shopping in Manchester or Rome or Mexico City.

It was a pain. International money orders at Deak-Perera, shipping charges, stamps...But something beyond magical happened when the package arrived. Foreign stamps everywhere, with sevens crossed and custom forms stuck to brown paper. I saved it all. I still save it all.

Gary Cooper As Gary Cooper

Cover photo by Bert Stern

Excerpts from, 'The American Hero Grows Older' by Thomas B Morgan, Esquire, May 1961.

"Seemingly ageless, Cooper has continued through the postwar boom that started in '29... Television may close movie theatres. Disc jockeys and crooners may replace Hollywood stars as teen-age heroes. Private eyes may vie with cowboys for popular attention. Yet Cooper persists."

""I feel real good," Cooper said. "Keep my weight to 190 by backing away from the groceries every now and then.""

"He had the laconic air of a man who never stands when he can sit and never sits when he can get flat. "Here I am, all the time talking about how hard actors work," he said, "and here you find me lying on my ass.""

""They may call that stuff on TV Westerns," he said, "but they're really Easterns. They're gangster stories with big hats and they're all crap. And the hats they wear! There's only one real cowboy hat and it's not the one those kids wear on television.""

"He went to the room in which he had left his city clothes, peeled to the waist and washed off his make-up. He wore a St. Christopher's medal on a chain around his neck. (He had converted to Catholicism in 1959.) ...he dressed himself in alligator shoes, grey flannel trousers, blue shirt, dark tie, yellow sweater, tweed sports coat with sky-blue hanky flaring from the chest pocket, and a Tyrolean hat."

""Every Fall, I meet Hemingway out in Sun Valley. We both have places there. Well, Papa and I go hunting. You know, it does you good to get out and get your butt wet every once in a while.""

"The face was seamed and worn in the Western way, but it wasn't stern the way some Western faces are. The sophisticated, sunny life of southern California was there, rather than the country life up where the winters last so long. "

"...a young man with two comrades looked up, recognized Cooper, and said nastily, "Look chaps, a movie star!" Cooper had already gone a step beyond the table. He stopped, turned, and towered over the three young men. A muscle twitched in his jaw and his lips became a hard, thin line.

And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the trio: "Stand up when you say that!" he said.

For a moment, the young men were motionless. Then one smiled -- faintly. Gary Cooper turned away, walking out of the restaurant to the Duke of Gloucester's Rolls-Royce, at fifty nine going on sixty, still playing Gary Cooper."

The Double Take Tie

Back in the days of expense account yore, it was not unusual to drop $300 to $400 on lunch with a single client. Beers before lunch, wine with lunch, after lunch port and cigars. This was relationship building and I sure as hell wasn't going to endure three hours of a CFO's gushing about his favorite ride at Six Flags on my dime. Especially when my employer had an iron clad non-compete.

I have seen clients expense golf clubs, fur coats and prostitutes. That's not so much about building relationships as it's using your position to grab something for yourself. The client who bought a fur coat also bought this tie for me. Or, was it a pair of box cloth braces? I'm not too sure. It was after a very long lunch that we stumbled into Paul Stuart. The client wasn't so much generous as he was buying my silence when he whipped out company plastic to pay for a fur lined Loden coat.

That was 17 years ago and this tie remains a favorite despite its unethical origins. Everybody thinks it's a baseball tie until they take a closer look. Hugely popular with Brits and Bermudians, it never fails to secure a surprised double take. I guess they wonder why a Septic (Septic Tank- Yank) would wear a Cricket tie? They should ask the guy who expensed it.

It's in the Music...

One Summer night in 1990, I was offered Ecstasy at the Roof Gardens in London. I turned it down insisting Becks took care of me just fine. I watch this video with more than a little regret.

Ska Sunday

Sundays are my SkaDays. Missing Words by The Selectors. Under the radar but a sone cold classic. It went well with a Bloody Mary, side bacon sandwich and packet of Silk Cuts -- Purple or yellow depending on the size of hangover.

"How We Used to Live"

"Whenever you go down the roads in Britain, you travel not in three dimensions but in four.  The fourth dimension is the past.  And as we move to and fro in this fourth dimension,  we see not only landscape, but the economic, political and social forces at work behind the landscape…shaping it…forever changing it, but leaving, here and there, the record and the mark.

The interesting thing about the use of images is that they're often drawn up of something in the past.  Some experience which stimulates a strong emotional response.  There's life everywhere and the tracks we make are shared and crossed by the paths of others…who know this world better than we do." 

From,  "How We Used To Live." A documentary by the band Saint Etienne and film maker Paul Kelly.  It premiered last October in London but haven't seen it available in the UK, much less the US.  It's a beautiful trailer that speaks to those who came before us and how they are still with us... in that fourth dimension.