How our hearts revved up upon hearing those words. Why, no woman with a half brain in her head would have shopped anywhere else for she knew — she knew! — the delectably powerful trading value in those itty bitty green stamps.

Did you know that green stamps endured for fifty years? Yes, they did. From 1930 through 1980. They were started by two enterprising men, Sperry and Hutchinson. One stamp book contained 24 pages, each page holding 50 stamps with a value of 1200 points.

Here’s the good news. If you still have some up in your attic or under the backseat of your old 1950 Studebaker, don’t throw them away. You can still cash them in. Who knew? Just go on the website and they’ll tell you how. But, come on now. What housewife would have allowed her stamps to languish for years without cashing them in? It was un-American!

Green stamps were everywhere. I well remember in the ‘50s seeing our garbage truck with the words “We Give S&H Green Stamps” plastered on its side. Just how that worked, I never figured out. Did the driver leave them inside the empty garbage can each week? And who, I wondered, wanted to lick them after they’d been in there?

Of the four McLaughlin kids, I was the one who regularly and most passionately pasted Mom’s stamps. I loved it when she dug them out from the bottom of her purse, all wrinkly and curly edged. Later I rejoiced when amongst them were full sheets that filled a whole book page with one swipe of my tongue. What a feeling of power! Furthermore I reveled as the books got fatter and fatter, bulging way past their original flat shape. (Unfortunately, because of my fervency, I was frequently afflicted with a condition called dry tongue, a medical rarity common only in over-zealous stamp lickers. Regrettably, S&H gave no insurance coverage for this.) Just kidding.

In 1952, my ex-pat uncle came to the U.S. from his home in Paris. His task was to entirely furnish a home for a French diplomat who was moving to Washington, D.C. This, of course, included fully stocking the kitchen pantry. Uncle Warren had four overflowing grocery carts when he pulled up to the check-out counter of a local grocery. It took twenty-five long minutes to ring him through.

Upon completion, the clerk handed him a receipt as long as a roll of toilet paper along with a two-inch stack of Green Stamps. Having never seen them before, and puzzled over what they were, he decided not to bother with them. Thus turning to the woman behind him in line he said, “Excuse me, Ma’am. Would you like to have these?” She went down in medical history as the first known case of S&H-stamp-overload apoplexy!

I was not only the best stamp licker in my family, but I was also the first child to marry, so to my astonished delight Mom chose to reward me with her cache of stamp books. With that one sweeping magnanimous gesture, I became a twenty-year-old betrothed lady who was suddenly rich. S&H Green Stamp rich! I would soon be furnishing my first home — a Quonset hut in the University of Colorado’s Veterans Housing. Not a whole Quonset hut, mind you, but a half Quonset hut.

The day Mom and I went to the Austin Green Stamp store was a day of joy and jubilation. In my right hand I carried a large, remarkably heavy paper bag with enough green currency to buy the world — at least my world. Entering the store, I was wonderstruck, every turn of my head blinded by its trading stamp splendor — grand in a glorious, plebian, Austin sort of way. With the fluorescent lights glinting off the merchandise, the scene was bedazzling.

I set off immediately pirouetting down the aisles, twirling from one display to another, taking care that my heavy bag did not knock over the stacks of glass measuring cups, juice glasses and casserole dishes. With trembling fingers I caressed the dish towels, bath mats, aprons and ironing board covers. You would have thought I was picking out a second husband by the way I scrutinized each item!

Overwhelmed by the splendor, it was impossible to know which of the lovely objects would be going home with me. Nonetheless, burdened with these delicious decisions, I carried on.

At the end of the first hour I thought I had gazed upon and touched S&H’s entire stock of merchandise. But, I had not for all at once, there it was! How had I overlooked it? My eyes swiveled in its direction, my very soul drawn to it like flies to a bologna sandwich. Grasping hold of a weight bearing post, I was nearly catapulted into a cataleptic state. Moreover, I could swear it was giving me — me! — a come hither look.

Standing a stately thirty-one inches tall, with a sturdy oaken base, was a lamp. Not just any lamp, mind you, but a lamp! At two-inch increments, encircling the grain of its well turned base, were repeating golden bands. I knew they were 24K! But it was the shade that really flipped my heart into afib. Large, gathered, undulating and unapologetically sassy ruffles circumambulated the top and bottom bringing to mind a tantalizing Flamenco dancer. I could hear the clicking of her castenettes.

I was smitten. Super smitten.

Then a sudden unnerving kerfluffle gripped my S&H shopping contentment. Should I go the practical route or the glamour route? After all, the luscious luminary required a life sucking 4.5 books, the equivalent of a set of nesting mixing bowls, a broom and mop combo, with a door mat thrown in! Did my complete happiness really depend upon owning a flamboyant Spanish dancing lamp?

It took me a whole fifteen seconds to decide that it did. After all, let’s face it, wasn’t I — Peggy, Peggy Soon To Be Married Lady — about to decorate a half Quonset like no other half Quonset the world had ever known? Wouldn’t people be struck dumb by the splendiferousness of my Quonset décor; by my flair for emblazonry? I thought so.

I pulled my groaning cart up to the check-out. Then unflinchingly I pulled my awesome stockpile of books out of the paper bag (momentarily weighing their heft for a quick calculation) and stacked them in a pyramidical mound before the astonished clerk. There is no question I was her champion customer of all time. Who cared about the agony of dry tongue when such bounty would soon be mine?

That day I traded Mom’s stamps for riches beyond my imagination: a viscose nylon bath mat (1 book), an EKCO egg beater (1.5 books), a set of Cal-dak folding TV trays (4 books), a double bed Fashioncraft waffle and hob nail chenille bedspread (3 books), a Wiss pinking shears (2.5 books), a glass swan candy dish (1.25 books), a standing wrought iron ash tray (1.75 books), a taffeta leaf motif shower curtain (1 book), a Can-O-Mat wall mounted can opener (1.75 books), a Princess Gardner Ladies French Continental Purse Billfold (1.5 books), one carrot peeler (.50 books), a four-gallon red plaid Skotch Kooler (2.25 books), a Mirror twelve-cup aluminum percolator (1.25 books), a Parker pen with polished fine point (1.75 books), a plastic leather grained chartreuse hassock (2 books), a set of ceramic ducks (1.25 books), an Aladdin thermos bottle with cork plug (1 book), a Bissell Reliance carpet sweeper with genuine wood handle (2.25), a Welmaid ironing board cover (1 book), a toilet plunger (.50 book) and a ridiculously gaudy-but-resplendent table lamp (5 books!). The munificense was mind boggling! Too much! Imagine a girl like me with her very own intoxicating lamp … plus a carrot peeler, a leaf-motif shower curtain and a toilet plunger!

Right now I know there are women out there reading this who have also experienced the glory of S&H Green Trading Stamps. You, too, remember how the titillating bulk of those filled books felt in your handbag — how your hearts pummeled around in your ribcages as you stepped inside the Green Stamp Store. Ladies, this was shopping at its best. Shopping with no money!

Alas. It’s just another lament for those bygone, carefree, free days? Let’s face it, today’s clipped coupons just don’t hack it.

Peggy Keener of Austin is the author of two books: “Potato In A Rice Bowl” and “Wondahful Mammaries.” Peggy Keener invites readers to share their memories with her by emailing maggiemamm16@gmail.com. Memories shared with Keener may be shared or referenced in subsequent editions of “Full Circle.”