(This article first appeared in the May print edition published April 30)
One of Henderson’s first and oldest references to the existence of the online world—and one of its oldest non-permanent signs—is about to vanish.
I’m talking about “Coupons on web.”
I’m not for sure how long it has existed. I’m guessing at least 25 years. But a very long time ago, by digital measures, the folks at the Concord Custom Cleaners dry cleaning branch at the corner of First and Main streets placed a message on a two-sided elevated marque sign: “Coupons on web.”
To my recollection, that message went up in the earliest days of the internet in Henderson. I’m sure it was during the Clinton administration, maybe around 1997.
That was back when most folks got online through a dial-up connection, using a telephone line. For most home users, tying up your phone line with an internet connection meant no one could call you. Your home phone line was your connection to the outside world.
We didn’t call them “landline” phones, because there weren’t many cell phones in those days (and those that did exist wouldn’t fit in your pocket). It was just your phone line, and when you, as a digital pioneer, went online, your home phone was tied up. Anyone who called you would get a busy signal.
Dial-up service was something of an ordeal — you, or someone you knew, had to be pretty handy configuring a computer to make a TCP/IP connection work (although an early internet service provider called Henderson Online made it a little easier by distributing the necessary software pre-configured on black plastic diskettes).
That software would help your computer dial a phone number to connect your computer with your ISP. Your computer and your ISP’s servers would negotiate that connection through a series of audible “dings” and “dongs” and quite a bit of static. But if everything went just so, you would be connected.
But connected to what? For a while, the online world was described as being “the Information Superhighway,” though mercifully that phrase fell into disuse fairly quickly. Websites were described as being on “the worldwide web,” which accounted for why website addresses started with “www.”
So yes, you would be connected, but at a blindingly slow rate. Connection speeds were primitive. Web pages would appear at a sloth-like pace. Yes, you could get on the worldwide web. But like settlers in the old West, you got there at the speed of a wagon train. The Information Superhighway was a goat path.
Still, the folks at Concord Custom Cleaners back then could only be described as visionaries. Despite the pokiness of dial-up connections, despite the hassle of configuring your computer to get on the Information Superhighway, they saw the future.
They saw that they would no longer pay to have coupons printed in newspaper advertisements.
They saw that the future was folks at home taking a few minutes to coax their clunky home desktop computer (which probably ran Windows 95) to connect online via their phone line, and navigating to a website, and locating coupons on that website, and printing a coupon on their dot matrix printer, and taking that coupon down to the Concord drop-off station at First and Main streets, and voila, they got, what, 35 cents off the cost of having their dress shirt laundered and ironed?
“Coupons on web.” That was the future.
And it has remained the future for a quarter-century or longer. Since that eternal message went up, there have been four administrations of American presidents, two of which served two terms.
There have been technical achievements. Netflix, a service that shipped you movies on DVDs via the United States Postal Service, was launched. The Segway, which they said (briefly) would change the world, was invented. Then Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and the iPhone appeared and actually changed the world.
There have been tragedies. Diana, Princess of Wales, died in an automobile accident while being pursued by parrarazzi. 9/11 shook America. Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans.
Cultural milestones were achieved. The Harry Potter books became bestsellers. “SquareBob SquarePants” debuted. “Cats” came to Broadway.
Winters set in and springs bloomed. Babies were born, grew up, married and had babies. University of Kentucky men’s basketball teams stopped reaching the Final Four, then stopped reaching the Sweet Sixteen.
Yet night and day, year after year, the message remained: “Coupons on web.”
But now, its days are numbered. Concord Custom Cleaners closed its branch here, and Stephen Boyens’ Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance office has moved in. I’m told a Farm Bureau sign will soon be installed on that post.
And with that, an era will end.
Coupons on web, we hardly knew thee.