The old joke about the Sears catalog is that, when the new one came in, the old one was used in the outhouse.

Thank God for today’s bathroom tissues!

But you may wonder what was used in the outhouse BEFORE Sears catalogues came in.

Well, have you ever heard the expression, “Rough as a cob?”

Yep, that’s what they used.

Thank God for today’s bathroom tissues!

When I wanted an old catalog, I went to the Internet. That 1897 Sears catalog was the Internet, or at least the e-Bay, of that age.

In this 1897 Sears catalog, the most remarkable things from our point of view are the pistols for sale, the cheapest costing 65 cents. They sold a regular Colt revolver for $3.95 and said it would cost $8 to $10 in a store.

They sold bicycles and bicycle rifles and bicycle pistols.

They sold a cure for opium addiction. They also sold laudanum, which includes a heavy dose of opium. If you wanted opium back then, you went to the local grocery store.

Paragoric was for babies. It contained codiene, for which an adult now needs a prescription. God knows why. There has never been a codiene addict, and if you ask an illegal drug dealer for codiene he will laugh at you. It’s like asking him for aspirin.

But they do manage to keep codiene away from people who are in pain by making it a prescription drug, so it makes lots of money for doctors and drug companies.

One doctor, desperate to prove to me that codiene was a deadly drug, said a lot of people were addicted to a combination of alcohol and codiene. I pointed out that I personally knew hundreds of people who were addicted to a combination of WATER and alcohol. That is the combination contained in every liquor bottle.

But if they could, doctors would make water a prescription drug.

A last remark about the 1897 Sears and Roebuck catalog as the e-Bay of its day.

You know all that spam most of us get trying to sell things to enlarge breasts and certain parts of the male anatomy. Well, 1897 was the Victorian Age, so no one would mention male parts, but sure enough, there is a breast enlargement cream in there!

I’m sure it worked as well as the ones people buy on the Internet now.