by Peter Twitchell
There are countless humorous stories from the early days. One story involves the Sears Roebuck catalog.
Here is as I heard it.
I was told by an Elder on the southwest coast of Alaska in the early days of radio KYUK. The Elder told me a man looked through the Sears Catalogue, in search of a wife. He saw a woman in the catalog that he fancied and placed an order for her.
The man mailed his catalog order to Sears and Roebuck and waited patiently for his order to arrive. Sometime later he received a package through the mail, for women’s clothing. He eagerly asked the postmaster if his order for a woman had arrived.
He was told orders for a woman are not allowed. He went home and returned to the post office with his catalog. Immediately he showed the postal worker the woman that he had ordered.
It was explained to the man that the woman’s clothing he had received was what he had ordered – not an actual woman.
I can imagine how disappointed he was.
I grew up without any siblings – no sisters, no brothers. And I remember as a boy of about seven years old telling my mother while pointing at a baby in the Sears catalog, telling my mother to order the baby. She laughed and told me, her exact words in the Yup’ik language.
“Tuaten piyuitut,” she said. “They don’t do that.”
“Piipit akluitnek order-aarcuutnguut.” “This is for ordering baby clothes.”
I was so disappointed to hear that. A couple years went by and mom adopted a baby boy from our cousin Catherine Japhet. She named him Tony.
I sympathize with the man who ordered a woman from the Sears and Roebuck catalog and paid for her, only to receive a woman’s garment.
I guess this is good for an article the way some people were mistaken in the early days, about mail order catalogs.
