3-minute read

I needed a thank-you card last week, so I ran to my nearest pharmacy and ambled past the shampoos and conditioners. And the toothpastes and mouthwashes. And the AAA batteries and B-12 vitamins. And those strips that promise to tear the blackheads off your nose with the force of a Category 5 hurricane.

Desperately searching for…cards…cards…

"I know they're around here, somewhere," I muttered.

My persistence eventually paid off, and I found myself in the enchanted land of Hallmark, American Greetings and Bergen Place.

In case you're wondering: Yes, Bergen Place Greeting Cards are named for a Garden State locale. It isn't the county, though. Bergen Place is actually a street the company owners once lived on in Red Bank.

Other New Jersey card companies include Food For Thoughts Cards (Morristown) and the UK-based Moonpig, which sells cards online and prints its American ones in Mahwah. 

It might have also been the home of The Wimmie Card Co., which I contemplated starting back in 1975. I was still in college, drawing greeting cards for friends, with "Wimmie" written on the back. (My initials are W.M.E.)

I eventually decided against it. Cards went for 25 Cents in those days. Or 50 cents, if you wanted something fancy.

So I decided to go into the newspaper business, where the REAL money is.

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A few years before that, in junior high, I was selling Christmas cards, door to door, to earn money for the holidays. 

Most of the cards were run-of-the-mill stuff, but there was one in my sample book that seemed to catch everyone's attention. It was an almost completely black card with a manger scene at the bottom and a silver star of Bethlehem at the top. 

As I made my way, door to door, almost every lady who let me into her house said, "Ooh! These are so different!"

Unfortunately, many of my relatives felt likewise.

The end result was a sea of black cards placed around our Christmas tree that prompted one visitor to ask, "Was there a death in the family?"

Anyway, at the drugstore last week, I had a hard time finding the thank you cards, possibly because no one thanks anyone for anything anymore.

Plus, last week was the tail end of greeting card season, which begins with Christmas and stretches into Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter and Mother's Day.

There are also cards for Father's Day, but — ho-hum — they're all so boring. (And always have been.)

Back in my small fry days, I'd make my way over to Morty's Rexall and try to decide which one to get my father: the card with the golf clubs on it (25 cents), the card with the pipe on it (25 cents); the card with the wooden duck decoy on it (25 cents); or the lollapalooza card with the golf clubs, pipe and duck (75 cents). 

Dad would summarily read these cards, force a smile and then toss them onto the table and forget about them.

My mother, meanwhile, kept every card my brother and I ever gave her in the bottom drawer of her bureau. 

After she died in 2016, I was cleaning out her room and found all these cards, tied up in ribbons, along with some of my journalism awards and the art medal I won in high school.

She had kept that silly little tin medal safe since 1972!

Touched, I brought the medal home with me seven years ago and haven't seen it since. I have no idea where I put it.

I think the dog ate it.

I made my way through the Easter and Mother's Day cards last week, which wasn't easy. Mother's Day is the most popular holiday for greeting cards after Christmas and Valentine's Day, selling roughly 141 million cards annually.

Easter is in fifth place with 57 million cards.

"Thank you" isn't a holiday, which is probably why I had to go up and down the card aisle five times.

I remember a time when all store greeting cards seemed on the verge of extinction. Baby boomers claimed not to have time to send out holiday cards and preferred delivering their birthday greetings online.

In 2002, Jacquie Lawson launched her ecard business and, for several years, people just couldn't get enough of her animated holiday cards, which came to life on our computers.

Other online options became increasingly popular as the price of paper cards went sky high. But a real card still strikes a chord.

I eventually found a thank-you card last week for a measly $4.99, and that was the cheapest one they had. And I found it only because a pharmacy employee in a blue smock came to my rescue and discovered four thank-you's hiding between the deepest condolences and the good lucks.

Perhaps I should send him a card.