I was driving up to Phoenix on Monday, thinking curmudgeonous thoughts. I was looking at all the development along the road, thinking when I was a child, there was nothing out here but desert.

Somewhere along the way, I started thinking about the Sears Catalog. The Sears Catalog was insturmental in my childhood and adolescence. Ganado, the town I lived in while I was turning from a boy into a young man, is small. So small that it didn't even have it's own grocery store... though there was a sort of convienence store that you could buy overpriced bread and milk from.

The nearest grocery store, a Safeway, was a half hour's drive away, in Window Rock. The nearest stores of any kind for other stuff were mostly an hour away, in Gallup.

So we got the Sears Catalog.

Page on page of stuff. Toys. Tools. Nearly-naked women in lingerie.

When we first started getting the Sears Catalog, it was the toys I was most interested in. I'd go through, and dog ear pages with toys I just couldn't live without.

A couple of years later, it was those nearly naked women in lingerie that fascinated me most. I didn't dog-ear those pages, though, because I would have been mortified if I knew that my mother knew I'd been looking at those pages so obsessively.

I can still recall the smell of those catalogs, and the excitement of getting a new one.

These days, I still enjoy window-shopping from catalogs. Of course, now, I'm more likely to visit Sears Online. Or specialty shops online. Or something.

Though I do still get a thrill when a Victoria's Secret catalog turns up in my mailbox. Not that I order them, or anything.