Okay, I’ll freely admit that holidays dedicated to discounted consumerism creep me out almost as much as being the K-12 teacher chaperone at a “St. Valentine’s Day” school dance. In fact, even more so, and as a retired K-12 teacher that’s saying a lot. Because the only thing worse than a middle school “Valentine’s Day” dance involves, at the very least, violation of the Geneva Conventions. At the least.

Nevertheless, “Black Friday” (why “black”? I dunno, I’m scared to find out) it is and here’s my heavily discounted, i.e., free, research search that might end up taking up your weekend and beyond.

John Margolies was an interesting person who grew up desperate to capture all the images encountered in his trips across America. Obsessively so, and our stupendously great Library of Congress has now collected over 11,000 photos Mr. Margolies obsessively snapped across our obsessively consumerist nation in the latter half of the 20th Century and beyond.

Here’s just two of those photos. Don’t know what it paid, but this dude had the best job in the world.