17 DECEMBER 1983, Page 11

A duck-pickin' Christmas

Nicholas von Hoffman

Camden, Maine

The only Americans who will be going to buy Christmas presents in the shops this year are deadbeats without credit cards. Persons too impecunious or too parsim- onious to pay the list price will frequent the discount houses, but well-heeled Americans increasingly shop by catalogue.

The department stores offer little more than high prices and hassle. Even in shops with famous names you cannot find a salesperson and, if you do locate a representative of this quasi-extinct occupa- tional species, you will find that he or she knows nothing about the merchandise. The department store of yore with its myriad services has ceased to be. It is easier to study the four-colour pictures and read the descriptions of what's for sale, knowing that you can order any time, day or night, and that your order will be delivered to your door or any other door you designate, gift-wrapped with gift card, in two or three days' time. You pay top dollar but you also have access to an incredible variety of merchandise in the catalogues. So far this year I have received 80 separate and distinct catalogues, not including the one given over entirely to teddy bears. In what shopping centre would one find a 'new survival suit'? And what salesperson could demonstrate it as well as the catalogue can? — 'The survival suit can make all the difference in an emergency. Made of metallised plastic, it can slow the loss of body heat by as much as 100 per cent, protecting you from the serious dangers of hypothermia.' If you are in doubt as to when you may be in serious danger of hypothermia and therefore in need of your survival suit, the same catalogue offers you a 'Zip-O-Gauge'. What could be simpler? 'Read the temperature as easily as you read the time with our ingenious Zip-O-Gauge. This tiny thermometer slips on a zipper pull or a D-ring for willing-and-ready access.' (Catalogue people are free and easy with their use of the hyphen.) In the last generation Americans have become obsessed with the weather and the dangers it poses. If it's not hypothermia, it's sunstroke one must guard against; and for that nothing is better than the new specialised radios which only tell the time and give the weather like this £39.95 Weatheradio-Timek u be receives weather forecasts up to 50 miles away, plus accurate-to-the-second time from the National Bureau of Standards Time Station in Fort Collins, Colorado. Easy to use on/off play-bars, volume control and built- in US time-zone converter wheel.'

For $395 there is also Quotrek, the radio which tells you the price for your stocks, but there probably is a limit to the number of single-topic radio sets the most gadget- racked American will have the pockets and the batteries for. You may find a radio almost anywhere this Christmas: they are advertised in dolls, in stuffed puppy dogs, and the firm of Enticements Ltd offers one for $30 in a Bumbershoot. 'You'll be sing- ing in the rain when you carry this new full- sized umbrella with the radio built into the handle.'

Every Christmas a different animal comes into fashion and merchandising focus — except for the teddy bear whose popularity never declines. This year it is the duck, an inherently risible animal, though not for the hunters thereof or those unknown monks of mail order commerce, the catalogue writers. This Christmas we can, for $229.95, enjoy the 'Duck Picker', whose 'flexible rubber fingers can pluck a duck or a pheasant clean in 3-to-5 minutes without bruising the bird. Vacuum created by the whirring rubber fingers, neatly deposited feather and down in a throw- away vinyl wastebasket .. mount a Duck Picker on your garage work bench In the lower price range one can buy a $25 'genuine leather-covered Duck Decanter. A real conversation starter. With the top on, it's a handsome decorative addi- tion to your bar or mantel. Unscrew the head ... a surprise ... it's a bottle.' But that is as nothing compared to the trademarked Phon-a-Duck. Who can describe it better than the anonymous catalogue writer? 'This quality decorative telephone for the sportsman is modelled from a prize-winning wood carving. It features a hand-painted seamless housing plus reliable working components. Phon-a- Duck has a retractable hand set and "quacks" when you receive a call.'

Or there is at $299, Privecode. Every arrogant misanthrope will want one of these which will allow you to 'never say "hello" unless you really want to. Privecode is an "intelligent" computer-controlled terminal that intercepts each incoming call before the telephone rings. You assign up to 16 three-digit access codes to the friends and associates you want to speak to. When one of them calls, a pleasant synthesised voice asks the caller for his personal access code. If the number entered is one you've authorised, the code will be displayed on a digital readout so you know who's calling. Now, and only now, does the phone ring ... No clues as to whether you are at home or not.'

Returning to the duck theme, or to his nearest relative, you may, for $120, order a goose sun-catcher of 'heirloom' quality or, should you prefer artificial illumination, there is the goose-neck lamp with a Canada goose head at the end of it, 'available with a mallard shade also, even though we have never heard of a duck-neck lamp'.

Also in the category of Chleophaga pieta (goose to you) the Orvis Company catalogue has the most baffling of entries selling for $9.95 the pair: 'What are these? Goose boots of course. If the honkers won't come into your set, it's probably because the frozen corn stubble hurts their feet. You should put out some of these leather boots among the decoys. Detailed instructions with each pair.'

I should hope so, but whom are these instructions for? The purchaser or the goose? Since the photograph of the goose boots shows they are laced up and since the majority of geese have web feet, these animals are going to need detailed instruc- tions on how to put on their footwear. A Polaroid snap of a silly goose going through his footwear drill would help the curious non-hunter.

A quick read through the catalogue library reveals that two aspects of contem- porary American culture are at war with each other in the world of mail order: Fitness America and Gourmet America. Every known food — pickled, frozen, can-, ned, salted, smoked, fresh — is offered for sale, also thousands of utensils to mutilate the food once it gets there. If you don't want the $750 Minigel ice-cream maker, you might prefer the chromed steel tortilla basket at $17. There is even a Gizmo which will test the microwave oven you bought last year from another catalogue to see if it is emitting death-dealing rays into your kitchen.

The most astonishing of the food catalogues is Jessica's Biscuit Cookbook Catalog, listing several thousand titles in over 60 closely printed pages. Apparently every state, every region, every town in America has enough recipies for a cookbook. My own state of Maine is represented by no less than three books, a generous number for a locality which even those of us who love it admit is not the gastronomic centre of the nation.

If all that local cooking drives you to drink, there is the $89.95 alcohol test corn- puter. Just breathe into the hole and this lit- tle Drink-o-Meter will tell you how far gone you are. Some people enjoy driving while drunk and for them there is the 29 Alert Alarm. 'This new safety device fits comfortably behind either ear and has an alarm which is triggered when your head drops forward.'

Some moralists may look at this list of less than essential merchandise and wish to dilate on the theme of mindless materi- alism. They would be mistaken. Catalogue purchases are the foundation of America's fastest growing industy — the garage sale and flea market. There are now whole areas of the country, especially in the old North- East, where nothing is made and nothing is done, and commerce consists of the sale and resale of used goose boots.