I grabbed the red sweatshirt I had on for only an hour or so yesterday, and later remembered that I was supposed to be wearing it, and remembering all those fighting cancer.

I think the first real item I made was a yellow plaid roll-up sleeve blouse in Home Ec. I had no clue that matching plaids would be that involved. Since I was in high school in the 60's I remember making a 2 piece lined wool suit like Jackie Kennedy and of course had the matching pill box hat. Next I made a dress out of a pretty green dotted swiss. We didn't have room to cut out our garments in the Home Ec. cottage so we were taken into the cafeteria to use those tables. When I started making my dress I realized that I had not only lost the back pattern piece to my skirt but also the fabric. My Mother and I went back to the store to buy more but they were out of that color. I ended up replacing the back of my skirt with white organdy and applied a white bow in the back of the waist. What had started out as a rather plain dress became a nice church dress which I wore for quite a while. The dress that gave me such fits turned out to be a favorite of mine. Now I really LOVE to sew and also enjoy "thinking outside the box". Some things are made special because of the work involved. It makes you appretiate the results.

Yes, S&H stamps were worth cash. Years ago Chicago had a trio of brothers who were infamous burglars. Pops Panczko was one of the three -- famous for being arrested over 200 times. I can't remember if he ever did serious time, but he could break into any safe. One of his memorable statements to the press was, "I'm a teef! It's what I do." Twenty years ago I knew a younger gal, Judy, through a service club. She was much younger than most of the group's members. One day the topic of Green Stamps came up, and some of us were reminiscing about them -- much as we are in this thread. Judy was all ears. "So *that's* what it was all about," she said. She remembered sitting at a table with her siblings, required to paste green stamps into booklets. It was endless. There were hundreds, thousands of the booklets. It was, "Don't ask. Just DO it." Judy's uncle was Pops Panczko.

Zalco, I haven't been to Terun, their crust looks delicious! Thanks for the rec. FYI, I don't consider Round Table to be great pizza, but it's close to my house and nostalgic. Pizza Delfina is really good and Vesta in Redwood City is where I go for creative toppings. Now that I think of it, Menlo Park doesn't have any great pizza places but I live in the next town over so if I'm lazy it's there or Redwood City. I grew up in Palo Alto and love to reminisce about all the great restaurants up and down El Camino, University Ave. etc. that are now gone. It's amazing that Round Table is still going strong. I especially miss the "old" Mings before they switched to mostly dim sum. I think we went out for dinner more than a lot of families. I could name 50 restaurants from Mt. View to Menlo Park that are now gone. I miss the good old days! I bought a small pizza oven but making the dough from scratch seemed more trouble than it was worth. Never tasted as good as the better pizza places.