Posted on 10/27/2018 4:35:04 PM PDT by SamAdams76
It was around March of 1974, right around the time that Nixon and Watergate was in the news day after day after day. I was in the fifth grade and not much up to speed on Watergate and why Nixon was in such big trouble over it. I was more concerned about The Partridge Family, my favorite show at the time, going off the air. I wanted to be Danny and to be able to play tricks on Reuben Kincaid.
My mother used to go grocery shopping over at the Finast - also known as "The First National" - a now long defunct supermarket chain that used to operate in the Northeast.
One day she came home all excited, she was going to give me and my brother and sister "some learning". So we gathered around as she unloaded the groceries, the usual cans of Underwood deviled ham, the Wonder bread, the frozen Gorton's breaded fish sticks, the big can's of Hi-C and so forth. At the bottom of one of the brown paper sacks (there were no plastic bags in those days), underneath the endless boxes of Rice-A-Roni (that she made with just about every meal), she proudly pulled out a shrink-wrapped hardcover book.
It was volume one of the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia. Encompassing all the world's knowledge from Aa- Be. For the most part, we kids were underwhelmed but we tried not to show it because our mom was so excited and happy about it.
Apparently the supermarket was running a promotion where each week, a new volume would be available for $4.99 ($1.99 if with a purchase of groceries of $25 or more).
Funk & Wagnalls. Apparently a big name in the encyclopedia world. It didn't have quite the cachet of Brittanica but it might have been up there with World Book.
With a burst of energy, after the groceries were put away, my mom quickly cleared an old bookshelf that my father had crammed with paperbacks of mostly "The Executioner" series featuring Mack Bolan and other such books, putting them all in the same paper bags that just had our groceries. Then she proudly put Volume One of the Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia (Aa-Be) in the upper left of the top shelf, informing us that in a few more months, that bookshelf would be FILLED with knowledge and that we would be able to use them to do research for our schoolwork instead of having to go to the library.
And so indeed the bookshelf did begin to fill up with a new volume each week. But during the summer (just as Nixon was resigning), we took a vacation and she missed a week of grocery shopping. So we ended up doing without Vol 12 (Pa-Re) for a while but eventually it showed up so she must have gotten the supermarket to special order it for her.
So that was how our family obtained our first set of proper encyclopedias. It was a big deal. I think we were the only ones in the neighborhood with a full set. And yes, we did use them from time to time for our schoolwork. Also, I would rummage through them at random from time to time, especially if my mom was around, as I wanted to show her that her investment was paying off.
The Britannica door-to-door sales people would come around from time to time but my Mom would shoo them away, proudly telling them we were "all set" with regard to encyclopedias. But she did over time get a vacuum cleaner, a set of knives and all kinds of Amway and Avon stuff from these door-to-door salespeople who were all over our neighborhood during those days. My father would often have fights with her over all these purchases. She found it hard to say no and as soon as a door-to-door man got through the doorway, I knew my father was going to be pissed later.
So in the 1980s, I got married and before my wife and I even had kids, we got suckered into the complete set of the Encylopedia Britannica. $1400, or twenty or so "easy payments" on the installment plan. Being a young couple, we went with the installment plan. And I tell you, those payments were anything but "easy". Then, without even asking permission, they kept sending us the annual updates for like another $50 a pop. It took endless letters and phone calls to get them to stop.
But it was a bit of a yuppie status symbol to have that beautifully bound set of Encyclopedia Britannica in our home. But our kids never touched them. By the time they got old enough to read, we got the the Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM, which they barely used and a few years after that, everything got on the internet and those CD-ROMs went into the trash. Couldn't even move them in a yard sale.
The Brittanica had a slightly better fate. When we were moving from our apartment to our first house, a neighbor took them off our hands for $75.
I’m not sure how we got our encyclopedia set, perhaps from the supermarket. What I really remember is Saturday morning, picking out a letter and browsing through to read whatever caught my interest. Happy memory.
My parents also bought me a Funk and Wagnall Encyclopedia
set from Hornbackers supermarket on the north side of Fargo, N.D. I took the encyclopedia to the recycling center some months ago. There are about 30 sets of various years and publishers. We started getting the annual update in 1962. I have them all from 1962 on. The yearbooks and the 1962 set are green.
(I love how you put words together!). We had the World Book encyclopedias for 1968. And you are so right...with 5 kids, I never appreciated what it must have cost my parents at the time. We kids referred to them for at least a dozen years for umpteen reports for school.
later
Makes me wonder what else will be out of date in 40 yrs.
No one’s mentioned yet that it was “Laugh-In” that really put Funk and Wagnall’s on the national map.
“Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls!”
I, too, have one, the electronic version that I downloaded to my computer. Doesn’t weigh anything, is really accessible, and takes up no bookshelf space.
Thank God for Amazon. It’s kept me from being driven out of my house by the Book of the Month Club, etc. But then, there’s also the Gun of the Month Club and the ammo . . .
I had the same experience with the Britannica.
Never used them, they became obsolete.
In my case, they were eaten by termites...
Sad to say, they were beautiful books, and I am a bibliophile...
Encyclopedias were the internet of yesteryear. Funk & Wagnalls were as good as World Books in my opinion while I was kid in the 1970s. My parents bought a set of World Books which they still have; I remember when the sales person came to our house. but I used to bicycle to the library and look up subjects in the other encyclopedias when I was researching something.
“It was volume one of the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia.”
We had Funk and Wagnalls that my grandmother bought in the late 40’s.! LOL!
“The Britannica door-to-door sales people would come around from time to time”
I remember the sales guy for Britannica came by one night. Later my parents discussed it and we ended up buying something much cheaper, World Book.
But if you wanted history, F & W was fabulous. I remember reading how the Roman’s built a road. World Book had squat.
(Yeah sometimes I was a weird kid.... but had a blast.)
My dad did the same thing for my brother and me. Must've cost him a fortune. We read some of it for pleasure, but mostly only used it for homework when needed. Never occurred to me to read the whole thing cover to cover. But later, I found out my best buddy in the Army had done just that as a little boy when his mom gave him a set. Darned, goody two-shoes, lol!
My Father got a set the same way. He must have got Mother to buy them as he never went shopping.
Around 1999 or maybe a few years later, I bought 3 sets of Britannica from want ads. I think the most I paid was $30 for a complete set. Also got two sets of World Book, one of them for free.
I still like looking things up in them but right now they are all stacked up in a store room.
“Read the complete set of worldbook.”
Same here, by the time I was 12, although I skipped most of the biographies. We also had Childcraft series, Time-Life history of the world, nat geo mags, and many others.
Any given Saturday afternoon, us kids would all be in the family room, reading.
Outcome: 3 accountants (2 of which own(ed) their small firms, the other became Professor), Engineer (moi), private school teacher (Masters), Head Nurse (Masters).
Incredible gift our parents gave us.
we got a handmedown set from relatives, real it from A-Z
I remember the Golden Book encyclopedia.
I had two encyclopedia sets when I was a kid. One of them was the Funk & Wagnalls Wildlife Encyclopedia set (22 Volumes) - which I thought was one of the coolest things ever!
The other was a 1950s Encyclopedia Americana (30 standard volume plus 3 annual volumes - 1953,54,55).
I thoroughly enjoyed both!
I was in a thrift store in DeFuniak Springs. I saw a set of World Book and asked the price. He said I could just have them fro free.
Probably taking up too much valuable space.
I have those but dated 1956. My family was a bunch of dumb old hayseeds living on a small ranch but we valued good books above all.
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