According to my father, somewhere around 1940, when he was in grade school in south St. Louis, he realized that all the little shops in the neighborhood would run a charge for their family and for many others, and he stopped into the little candy store that he passed on the way home from school and charged a few pennies worth of candy. That seemed all to the good and made a habit of it on the way home each day. Eventually the shop owner presented a small bill to his parents, and his mother, he said, put a boldly punctuated stop to all that. That was another America from the one we know today, don't you think?