The Vermont Country Store

Miss Edith grew up in a household that received catalogues from the Vermont Country Store, a wonderful place in Vermont where you could buy items that seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. As an adult, I have often taken advantage of the company's offerings, obtaining tubes of Boroleum, strange foreign candies, and obscure articles of clothing. There was a kind of Yankee vision of purity in the company's offerings, an innocence, which was dampened slightly when the printed catalogue stopped using only drawings to depict their offerings and began using photogrpahs (and color!). But Miss Edith's loyalty to the company remained undimmed.

Last night we received a new catalogue from The Vermont Country Store. Notarius thumbed through it quickly, ogling the canned foods -- cans of Cincinnati chili, a recent obsession of ours; cans of fried eggplant -- and commenting that we should place an order. I myself sat down with the catalogue with an eye toward acquiring birthday presents for some people we know, and was jarred (not canned) when I flipped a page to come across a number of items which would never have appeared in the Vermont Country Store catalogues of my youth.

Miss Edith doesn't think she's a prude, but... Oh, my.

I handed the catalogue back to Notarius. "I nearly dropped my drink when I saw this," I said. He stared, as they say, uncomprehendingly, at the pages I had open. "Breast lift cream," he said blandly.
"You're not focusing," I said.
There was a pause.
"Oh, my," he said after a moment. "Cock rings!"

So now you can get Boroleum, linen handkerchiefs, flannel sheets, and vibrators, and cock rings, all from one charming Vermont company. Ain't life grand?