Catalog Temptations

Catalog Temptations

A Requiem for a Time Before Amazon

By Ed Cullen

Another year’s gone by without my ordering a single thing by marking choices on paper, then waiting for the thing to arrive. No updates. No tracking. In those olden days, I would have forgotten I’d ordered the cap, knife, solar light, shower shoes—then, zammo, there’d be a package on the porch.

The cat and I are old enough that porch packages still excite us.

It took thirty years to realize I already owned more sweaters than days cold enough to wear them all in South Louisiana. But still I’d pore over the catalogs, marveling at the bone structure and fitness of the models, their glowing faces warming me with their smiles and gleaming white, straight teeth.

I want the lace-up boots resting on one of the catalog’s hearths. I want a competitor’s boot-shoes of premium cow leather with suede uppers that shed snow and rain. In South Louisiana, they shed water up to the first two inches. Then, you better have a pair of calf-high babies open ends down, soles to the sky, between the bed of your pickup and the cab. Basic black with red bottoms.

The classic catalog boot-shoe comes in colors of “dark cement,” brick, rust, and rust orange with cozy fleece lining in orange and black plaid and Primaloft insulation. Check the temp before slipping these on. There are five days in this tropical winter season that you can wear these shoes without losing liters of fluid through your feet.

Oh, but those vintage indigo uppers with bright navy lowers and slate plaid liners have me reaching for the antique silver letters over blue embossed numbers of my VISA. Sure, they cost $200 before tax, but at two wearings per year, I would never wear them out.

I was recently shoving one of the catalogs into the kindling box when— blam—the pages fluttered open to “Our Bestselling Rainwear”. Now, rainwear I can use. But the jacket I already have just won’t wear out. I try leaving it behind at the coffee shop, but my flight is arrested by the inevitable “Oh, sir, you’re forgetting your breathable rain jacket with drawstring hood and dark gray zip-up vest.”

Warming my shins before a chiminea fire burning up those old catalogs, I know what I want from them isn’t for sale. I want the lakes and islands behind the gorgeous humans. I want the mountains of Maine, the sailboats gliding past E.B. White’s old farm and, above all, I want the models’ time in life.

I went to the Mother Store of all adventure outfitters in Seattle a few years ago, hoping the catalog models worked there when they weren’t jumping puddles, scaling sheer rock faces, or draped over the arms of chairs before stone fire places.

My visit to Outdoor Valhalla was rewarded by simulated hiking trails that lead up from the parking lot through new-growth evergreens to doors with crossed, ice-axe handles. The woman who sold me a Velcro strap for my back pack looked merely human, though she had a nice smile. And she was from New Orleans.

She was a photographer, happy to have the part-time gig at Camping Castle, but she was homesick. She would have cheerfully traded shooting the rapids of an untamed river for the walking paths of Audubon Park.