An Ace Giant Double of Charlotte Armstrong novels

Today we have an Ace Giant Double featuring two novels; flip it over and you get the second novel! 

• Titles: The Better to Eat You & Mischief
• Author: Charlotte Armstrong (1905-1969). The best article I found about her was published on PopMatters in 2015 and written by Imran Khan, whose insights include: "Why Armstrong’s novels have never left the indelible impression that the works of her fellow female mystery-writers have may be the biggest mystery surrounding her. Like many authors of her ilk, Armstrong’s women were fearless investigators of their environments, digging for clues, crossing boundaries and generally engaging in what was considered a 'man’s work.' But her characters were more than just women combating the realms of male-dominated environs; they also re-envisioned the roles that were designed by women writers like Armstrong herself. Her women opened the same forbidden doors to the same cellars that the women in the stories of Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth did, scavenging the deep, dark depths of a mystery for some decisive clue. But Armstrong’s characters also opened doors for other reasons; widening the shafts on the predicaments of their intrinsic mysteries, their inner worlds were just as much up for cross-examination as were the murdering fiends of the author’s tales. Armstrong knew, in essence, that her stories were only as good as the women leading them."
• Cover illustrator: Unknown, to the best of my research, which is a real bummer. Cover illustrations for mid-century mystery novels are not nearly as well documented online as sci-fi and fantasy covers. If anyone knows, please leave a comment! 
• Is that a scary clown on the cover of The Better to Eat You? Yes.
• Does ... does the clown eat people? It's unclear.
• Publisher: Ace Books (G-521)
• Publication date: July 1965 (Mischief was originally published in 1950 & The Better to Eat You was originally published in 1954.)
• Pages: Mischief is 123 pages and The Better to Eat You is 164 pages.
• Format: Paperback
• Price: 50 cents
• Excerpt from The Better to Eat You: "Sarah sat before her typewriter, holding her head together with both hands. All the long train of her sorrows was dragging through her memory."
• Excerpt from Mischief: "Bunny listened politely to the story. When Mommy read, the story seemed more interesting. When Daddy read to her, it was interesting, too, although Daddy never did finish a story. He always got off to explaining something, and the explaining turned out to be another story."
• Film adaptation: Mischief was made into the 1952 movie Don't Bother to Knock, featuring Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft and Elisha Cook Jr. It's considered to be one of Monroe's best acting performances.
• Mischief's rating on Goodreads: 3.63 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2016, E.G. wrote: "A chilling read, suspenseful to the end and a view of insanity that is very present and forceful. It is a dark read -- bordering on too dark -- and that sometimes makes the characters annoying."
• The Better to Eat You's rating on Goodreads: 3.58 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2018, Historygirl wrote: "This is a comic thriller. Truly scary but with a screwball comedy element. The Better to Eat You features an extended literary metaphor that gets funnier and funnier as the book goes on. It is also an excellent romance."
• But what about the clown?? I guess you'll have to find out for yourself.

The post with 18,000+ pageviews

A "popular" new Papergreat post will get maybe 20 pageviews in its first 24 hours. This blog isn't exactly a buzzing hub of internet activity. So it was to my great surprise last month when I discovered that the quick and silly post Ingredients list found in the parking lot of a Circle K in Florence had thousands of pageviews during its first day. It has now accumulated about 18,400 pageviews.

All of this is because the post was chosen for aggregation by an AI-powered "news" site called Newsbreak, which gathers others' reporting on community news and puts it together in one stream for local readers. 

I imagine that the "found in the parking lot of a Circle K in Florence" portion of the post title is what caught the "eye" of the AI. Because a human being with journalism training would never have selected such a post to aggregate as "breaking news." So let that part be yet another lesson regarding the deep limitations of AI. 

At least Newsbreak states up front: "It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency: Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation."

I'm not sure how many people read that note, though. Newsbreak's readers questioned why it was aggregating an incredibly nonessential post from Papergreat. Some of their comments:

• Why is this news worthy?
• how is this news
• lmao why is this in the news?
• lmfao I cannot believe this made the news!
• Well this source is getting blocked
• why in the f**k is this a news article
• Why is this even a post.
• slow day huh
• why is this news and why did someone actually take the time
• This is news worthy because of what??? I’ll wait for a reasonable answer

Clearly, some of them still don't understand this is what you're going to get when you remove humans from the equation and let a bunch of code try to figure out what's "newsworthy." It just so dumb that we're trying to have AI reinvent a wheel that wasn't broken.

Thomas Baekdal asked in 2024, "Why do news aggregator apps keep failing?" and found that the initial answer is quite simple: 

"We already have all the news aggregators we need. ... Every single national and local newspaper is a news aggregator. It's a publication where the journalists look at millions of different things that have happened in the world over the past 24 hours, and then they have picked out (aggregated) the news stories that they feel you need to see. ... So, newspapers are news aggregators. Which also means that all the news aggregators are just aggregating other news aggregators... and that just doesn't make much sense, neither in terms of audience or business model. ... For some strange reason, many tech entrepreneurs never realized this."

* * *

For what it's worth, all of the interest generated did get some folks to comment on the blog post (not the Newsbreak post) with ideas regarding what all the ingredients were for.

Guesses ranged from "some sort of sweet and spicy marinara sauce using honey" to pork roast with hot honey drizzle to pizza to pork barbecue. It's not clear whether they might have asked an AI chatbot to generate those guesses...

Easter mystery postcard

This badly damaged Easter postcard, with its image of children and chickens worshipping a child-sized pink egg, is quite the mystery. Would be very happy to get some feedback and insight, starting with the language and translation of the text at the top of the card (see closeup below). After some internet searching, my very tentative guess is that this is Kurrent, an old form of Germany handwriting based on medieval cursive, according to Wikipedia. It's also known as Kurrentschrift or deutsche Schrift. It was phased out in schools and eventually became obsolete starting in the 1910s. Am I way off? What do you think?

The back of the postcard adds to the mystery and I have little insight beyond some more guesses. One guess on my part is that the 9 4 13 in the postmark signifies April 9, 1913. That's a good bit after Easter, though, which I believe was March 23 in 1913. Meanwhile, the word ВЕНДЕНЪ appears in the first postmark. Again with some internet help, I'm going to guess this is (1) a place name, (2) pre-revolutionary Russian, written in Cyrillic script. Clearly different from the printed script on the front of the card. And what place is ВЕНДЕНЪ? That may translate to Wenden, of which there were several in Germany. There's also Cēsis, Latvia, for which the German name is Wenden. The second postmark contains the word ЛИГАТЪ, but I can't glean much insight from that. 

Please share your thoughts and clues regarding this fascinating very old postcard! 

Guerre

Whenever I fall into a rut of not posting, whether it's due to busyness, stress, depression, despair at world events or some combination of the above, I typically look through postcards to find something that can spark me to break the streak. In this instance, I already knew which postcard I wanted, but I had to go through the entire shoebox to find it. 

I used to have about a half-dozen of these postcards labeled "Guerre 1914-1918." I no longer remember how I acquired them. And this might be the only one I still have, unless the others are elsewhere. Over the years, I've thought often about posting one of them, but there never ended up being a match between the motivation and the moment. 

Now seems like a grimly appropriate global moment.

The photograph for this Great War postcard was taken by Marcel Delboy and was #48 in a series. According to the website undivided-back postcards, Jacques Marcel Delboy (1882-1941) was based in Bordeaux, France: "Delboy published his work as black & white collotype postcards and souvenir booklets. Some of his cards were hand-coloured. He later used Delboy and Yobled (Delboy in reverse) logos."

This postcard features the Great War devastation in Fismes, a commune in northern France. The caption is in both French and English, with the English version stating "Esplanade street after the bombardment of the Germans." 

This photo is likely associated with the monthlong Battle of Fismes and Fismette (Fismette being a hamlet linked to Fismes by bridge), which took up most of August 1918. More than 2,000 Americans were killed and nearly 14,000 wounded during the month of fighting. There are no historical figures for French or German casualties. The horror created a lasting bond between Fisme and Pennsylvania (particularly Meadville), where many of the soldiers had been from.

Hervey Allen (1889-1949), a National Guard soldier from Pittsburgh who survived the gassing, fires, shrapnel and shell shock of the Battle of Fismes and Fismette, wrote this in his memoir, Toward the Flame:

"It took me about half an hour to crawl to the river. I had to put my mask on at the last, as the mustard gas was strong in the little hollow in which I lay. My hands were smarting. Some of the shells brought my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be blown to pieces. The river was very nearly in flood and so there was no bank, the field gradually getting soggy and swampy till it sloped out into the water. There was a lot of submerged barbed wire that made going ahead very painful and slow. I had, of course, to throw away my mask as it got full of water. My pistol went also. It was too heavy to risk.

"Once in the water, I worked under the single board of the footbridge, shifting along hand over hand, which took me halfway across. There I struck out, plunging in a few strokes to the other side and working through the wire. Swimming with shoes was not so difficult as I had thought, but the cold water seemed to take all my courage, which was what I needed more than ever. Our own machine guns were playing along the railroad track on our side of the river. After getting across, it seemed for a while that I would be caught between the two fires.

"I lay there in the river for a minute and gave up. When you do that something dies inside."

Ingredients list found in the parking lot of a Circle K in Florence

This small piece of paper was on the ground of the parking lot at a Circle K in Florence this morning. I am, of course, that guy who would pick it up and take it with me, even though it's been trod upon and could potentially be covered in mysterious bacteria from outer space that turns everything into triffids. But an ephemeraologist must take these risks.

Here's a transcript of what's on the paper:

Ingedients [sic] list

Hot Honey

Unbleached Bread flour, Purified Water, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Kosher Salt, Active Dry Yeast, Roma Tomatos, Onion, Garlic, Roasted Fresno Chiles, Pasteurized Milk, Vinegar, Citric Acid, enzymes, Pork, Honey, Basil

So, what does all of this make? How does the pork fit in? Why are no quantities listed? And it's Hot Honey — what? Is this a from-scratch pizza? A stromboli? I really need some culinary experts to provide insight in the comments section. 

Also, I hope the person dropped this after the trip to the grocery store.

Related posts

• Grocery list left behind on shelf at the supermarket
• Ephemera seen on Weis parking lot at 8:32 p.m. on 12/11/18
• Painted rock in parking lot of Fry's grocery store in San Tan Valley
• In which my wife comes up with a new category of ephemera

Saturday's postcard from Tokyo

Something cheerful for a grim state-of-the-world Saturday: This lovely postcard arrived this week from a fellow Postcrosser in Tokyo, Japan. I love that cat peeking in the doorway. The whole image reminds me of Fruits Basket, for some reason. On the back of the wonderfully decorated card (see below) she writes:

Hello, Chris, my name is Miki and I live in Tokyo. I want to be a journalist in the future, so I'm studying hard. The postcard's picture is Japanese traditional fall event. In Japanese countryside, people make dried persimmons. If you have a chance to visit Japan, I think autumn is the best season. I hope you are having a good day!

Here are some links for more on Hoshigaki (Japanese dried persimmons):

• Persimmons: A Sweet Autumn Tradition in Japan
• Hoshigaki: A Beautiful Fall Tradition
• Why I’m Hand-Massaging Persimmons Every Day (& Loving It)
• The History of Japan’s Autumn Harvest Festivals

Ghoulardi's kid

Speaking of TV horror hosts (as we were last week with Zacherley), Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride, is a wonderful book about Ernie Anderson's antics as late-night host Ghoulardi on  Cleveland's Channel 8 (WJW) from 1963 to 1966. He is one of the most widely and fondly remembered of the regional horror hosts. And one of the most influential.

As Tom Feran and R.D. Heldenfels wrote in this 1997 book, WJW and Anderson "created an icon of popular culture whose legacy, decades later, would defy the disposable standards of modern media. Television was growing, still rough around the edges, into the common thread of community consciousness. Ghoulardi would first conquer it, amassing an audience of a size unimaginable today; and then transcend it, surviving in memories, attitudes, and language of a generation who would carry him to even wider attention."

It's a terrific book and one I highly recommend. And it comes with a fun coda. This passage appears on the final two pages of the book:

"Ernie's son Paul, an up-and-coming movie director, is stirring up trouble as eagerly as his father did. Paul's first movie, Hard Eight, came and went, but his second feature, Boogie Nights, was causing comment months before it was released. A look at the people working in and around the pornographic movie business in the '70s, the movie was the subject of eyebrow-raising stories about its subject, its male frontal nudity, and its two-and-a half-to-three-hour length. ... Through the efforts of the twenty-six-year-old auteur, it also boasted a cast of solid players like Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, and William H. Macy. 'The worst thing you can do is be wishy-washy,' Paul said of moviemaking. His old man seems to have lived his whole life by the code, and Paul acknowledged 'I definitely inherited that trait.' As Boogie Nights sat on the verge of national release, Paul said he was next considering making a film about his dad — one that would focus especially on his years as Ghoulardi. He already had paid tribute to his father by naming his production firm The Ghoulardi Film Company."

Indeed, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is the son of Ghoulardi — Ernie Anderson.

Anderson hasn't made a movie specifically about Ghoulardi yet, but his most recent film, One Battle After Another, is up for 13 Oscars this coming weekend. To which Ghoulardi might exclaim, “Stay sick, knif!”

Feral cats, March 2026

Put it in the Louvre. That's Mamacita on the right. In the center is her older son Creamsicle 

and on the left is her younger son Splash. 

Cats are a primary reason I don't write 10 blog posts a week. In addition to taking care of the indoor cats, we have "regulars" in the neighborhood feral community who get from us the food and water they need to subsist in the harsh desert climate. (I realize that I repeat myself when it comes to these cat posts, but c'est la vie.)

Here's the current March 2026 rundown on the feral/community kitties:

1. The matriarch is Mamacita and we've known her for more than four years, since she was a kitten. There a great picture of her at the bottom of this May 2025 post. 

2. She's often seen with her older son Creamsicle, who is the cat we see most often. He hangs around in the mornings, sits in the firepit when he's trying to be sneaky and catch a bird and looks for shade on hot afternoons. 

3. Splash is a black-and-white tuxedo cat and is Creamsicle's younger brother. The two brothers often come for breakfast together in the mornings. Splash, as I'm sure I've noted before, got his name because, when he was a kitten, he fell into the pool and did tiny paddles all the way to safety before I could even get into the water to save him, which I would have.

4. Blue-eyed Gumball has been coming around for almost two years. I think he was an abandoned or lost pet. He often spends the entire day sleeping in a chair underneath the patio roof. Temptations are his favorite food, and I usually have to distract him with Temptations and a stern look when I'm feeding other cats, because he likes to chase them.

5. Meowmix starting visiting around the same time as Gumball, and the two of them get along relatively well together, especially given that they're both tomcats, so I wonder sometimes if they were essentially abandoned together. Meowmix is much more mellow and always runs off after he's finished eating. He's a sweetheart and is the only feral cat, currently, that lets me pet them.

6. Marmalade first started visiting in December, as I noted in the Christmas post, and he's yet another tomcat. And yet another cat that I suspect may have been abandoned or lost. He's extremely not neutered and loves to spray, spray, spray. He has designs on Mamacita, because he's incapable of understanding that she's spayed. I have great hopes that we can TNR at least two of Marmalade, Gumball and Meowmix this month, before the summer weather really kicks. Of course we want to get all three of them neutered, eventually, but these things take time, patience and energy. Marmalade has lost weight since December, which further reinforces the notion that he may not have always been an outdoor cat and is now fending for himself. And so I worry about him, especially, with his first summer coming. Here are two photos of Marmalade in our front window well.

7. And our newest and final semi-regular is Yinzer (named by Joan). I'm fairly sure it's a male. He may be the youngest of the cats, and once again, grrrr, I think there's a decent chance that he was abandoned/lost. He started coming by tentatively and then running off as soon as I went outside. Then he would meow at the back door a couple times before scooting off. Now he stays and eats some food some mornings, which makes me happy. Here he is...

* * *

We had some special cat visitors at the beginning of the year. A new-to-us pregnant female began coming nightly shortly after dark for food and especially for cheese. It got to the point where she would scoot under the table and wait while I put food down for her, but otherwise she was extremely skittish, as a pregnant kitty should be. We watched her get really big as she came for a few weeks and then, unsurprisingly, she stopped coming. I suspect we were her secondary/supplementary food source during pregnancy, so I'm honestly not sure if/when we'll see her again if she lives a fair distance away. We'll worry for her and her kittens and be here to help if they ever return. We named her Daisy and, yes, she has a heck of a R.B.F. Life in the desert is tough for the mama cats.

And Daisy came with a surprise! On three nights and three nights only, she was accompanied by a male tomcat that we realized was the long-lost Fjord Nubbins. Fjord is a son of Mamacita and is Creamsicle's brother from the same litter. He disappeared a couple years ago, before we could TNR him, and we had just assumed the worst. But it appears that he's thriving. In my head canon, he's Daisy's mate and, when she was pregnant and needed food, he remembered this place and led her here, accompanying her a few times to say hello. I could be completely wrong, but I like that story and I'm sticking with it. I could only get snapshots of Fjord, and his very recognizable face, through the window. Here they are: 

Meanwhile, we still have occasional skunks but I can't tell who's who anymore after naming most of them last year. Given the time of year, I suspect that we might not be far from the time when we start seeing some tiny, adorable baby skunks. 

We also seem to have overnight raccoon(s), given the levels of mayhem I find sometimes in the morning. I'm glad we're helping them, but they're hitting the cat food budget pretty hard. (I could just stop leaving out food overnight, but I always imagine that the most skittish and vulnerable cats, ones I never see, depend upon it, so I'll keep doing it.) 

If you're interested in helping in a small way to feed the feral kitties and skunks, my Redbubble page offers a lot of postcards of these cats (both the indoor pets and the ferals) posing in adorable fashion.

Splash pages from 1937 yearbook

Quickie post as I keep working to resimplify. This is a two-page layout near the front of the 1937 yearbook for Hammond High School in Hammond, Indiana. That's the year my grandmother, then Helen Chandler Adams (1919-2003), would have graduated from the school. But I guess maybe the family had moved back eastward by then, because she's not in the yearbook.* It's an interesting snapshot of teenage life in the Midwest as the world was slipping toward all-out war. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

***

A few hours later ... addendum

*As I continued sorting and pruning family ephemera today, I answered this question by coming across Helen's resume in an envelope of family ephemera. This will be very handy for future posts. It clearly states that she graduated from Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1937. What's not clear is precisely what year the family moved away from Hammond, but I guess we can assume it was sometime between 1934 and 1936. And I assume I'll come across clarity on that with different ephemera at some point.

Also, I absolutely should have remembered Wilmington Friends School as being part of the equation, given, among other things, this 2017 post and this 2018 post.

Welcome to the California Zephyr

This piece of ephemera is about the size of an index card and greets passengers arriving on the California Zephyr.

The California Zephyr has a long, storied and extremely complicated history, and if you're interested in that, Wikipedia and many a railroad buff have you covered. This card is from the iteration of the Zephyr train service that operated from 1949 to 1970. It was operated by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific railroads, as noted at the bottom of this card. It was one of the longest train trips in the country, running between Oakland, California, and Chicago, Illinois. I strongly suspect that my great-grandmother, Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988), rode the California Zephyr in the 1950s or early 1960s. 

The card notes: 

"Dinner in the dining car is on a reservation basis so as to avoid standing in line. Advance selection of dining hour by each passenger should provide reasonable assurance that a seat will be available at the appointed time. The Zephyrette will pass through the train each afternoon to see about your reservations for dinner that same evening. We earnestly request your cooperation by being in the dining car at the selected time. No reservations are necessary for breakfast or lunch in the dining car or for any meal service in the buffet car."

Yes, "Zephyrette" was a thing. In fact, the Zephyrettes were famous enough to have their own Wikipedia page. It notes that a Zephyrette was a hostess on the California Zephyr between 1949 and 1970. It further states: "To qualify, a prospective Zephyrette had to fulfill a variety of criteria, from being single and either a college graduate or a registered nurse to being between 24 and 28 years old and between 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) and 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) tall. Once employed, Zephyrettes were expected to conduct themselves with 'dignity and poise' and also refrain from smoking or drinking while in uniform, among other requirements. Somewhat akin to an air line stewardess, the roles played by a Zephyrette were many, from hostess and tour guide to first aid responder and babysitter."

In addition to Wikipedia, there's an in-depth webpage on the Zephyrettes here. It adds this fun tidbit: "The Zephyrette was expected to pass through the train every couple of hours, checking on the passengers. If there were letters or postcards to be mailed, she would be happy to take care of them. If a passenger needed some item that wasn't available onboard the train, the Zephyrette would rush out to a local store during a station stop. (One Zephyrette took the shopping thing a bit too far, more than once spending too much time at the newsstand, and had to be put into a cab in Denver, rushing off to catch up with the train that had already left.)"

***

Today, Amtrak's iteration of the California Zephyr runs from San Francisco to Chicago, taking a little over 51 hours. As best as I can ascertain from Amtrak's confusing booking website, a one-way trip on the California Zephyr would cost, at minimum, $300 for coach. For some privacy and a place to sleep, the starting minimum would be near $1,000.

I've always imagined that I would enjoy traveling long distances by train, certainly more than I would enjoy traveling by airplane, boat or blimp. The California Zephyr sounds enjoyable and incredibly scenic, but I have no reason to be in San Francisco or Chicago, so I'm not sure what the point would be. I believe, unless I'm forgetting something, that the farthest I've ever traveled by train is from Philadelphia to Manhattan, which I've done numerous times. Basically a commuter-level trip. It would be great fun to take one of those long train rides across Europe and/or Asia, like the trips you see in the movies. Especially Horror Express. Because who wouldn't want to traverse the the 5,800 miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas? (Of course, I'm completely setting aside 100% of complicating geopolitics and wars at this point, which would make such a trip impossible, because I need a momentary mental health break.)

Zacherley's 1960 Transylvania passport for fan club members

This night of a nearly full moon seems like an appropriate one for this post about a parody passport that TV horror host John Zacherle (1918-2016) made available to members of his fan club in 1960. 

Zacherle got his start as host of Philadelphia WCAU-TV's Shock Theater in 1957 (playing a host named "Roland") and after a year or so moved to New York's WABC-TV for Zacherley at Large (they added the Y to the end of his name, and it kind of stuck).

According to an article on Zacherley.com (yes, he still has a fan website): "Zacherley was aggressively merchandised. One of the most fondly remembered souvenirs from that era was the 'Transylvanian Passport' which was available by sending two labels from Strawberry Cocoa Marsh Syrup to the manufacturer." Indeed, the back of my passport states "PRINTED IN THE MOONLIGHT BY COCOA MARSHMEN IN TRANSYLVANIA."

It's most fun on the inside, though. The text begins: "The undersigned CREATURE is hereby granted entrance to the SOVEREIGN STATE OR [sic?] TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE YEAR 1960; the year of the FRANKSTEIN JUBILEE."

The passport holder could check a box to classify themself as a He-Wolf, She-Wolf, Vampire, Mummy, Ghoul and/or Monster.

Then there's a spot to check boxes if the holder has been inoculated for Werewolf Fever, Moon-fright, Coffinitis, Sunrayphilia, Banana Blight, Fur Fullout, Egyptian Itch, Chronic Fangosis and/or Embalmer's Rash.

The "Restrictions" are described as follows: "This PASSPORT is issued by the AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE with the understanding and condition that the BEARER CREATURE will travel only during the hours of DARKNESS and will do no EXCAVATING IN THE STATE GRAVEYARDS after visiting hours. WOLF-CALLING is restricted to nights of the FULL MOON."

The ambassador-at-large is, of course, Zacherley, whose photo and signature appear at the bottom.

There are quite a few books and magazines filled with information about Zacherley. If you're interested in horror hosts in general, a good place to start is Elena M. Watson's Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed.

Please share any memories you have of Zacherley (or other horror hosts) in the comments section. I'd love to hear them! 

 

1949 silhouette postcards from Ocean City, N.J.

Continuing with the theme of posting about some items I came across during the sorting and decluttering of family ephemera earlier this year, here are some 1949 postcards labeled "Silhouette by Greenberg" from Ocean City, New Jersey.

I'm mostly sure I know who these folks are, with one tricky one. Clockwise from the top left, we start with the tricky one. It's either my grandmother Helen or my great-grandmother Greta. I'd lean toward it being Helen. Then comes my great-grandfather Howard, followed by Mom, who would be about 18 months old if this was created in the summer of 1949. Finally, that's Mom's brother, Charles, who is slightly older.

Greenberg was in business for a good while, as I've seen eBay listings for similar silhouette postcards from as early as 1939. It's a good bet the business was located on or near the Ocean City Boardwalk. Greenberg was far from the only outfit making silhouette postcards in the United States in the middle of the 20th century. I'm guessing some popular tourist spots had a dozen or more vendors.

Ellie McCrackin, working for the website Postcard History, wrote this interesting history of silhouettes and the Wikipedia page goes into even more depth.

Semi-related posts

• Saturday's postcard: New Jersey trolley line in 1907
• 10 postcards showing Atlantic City as you've probably never seen it
• Partial mystery photo: Three women in Atlantic City, New Jersey
• Did you enjoy your weekend down the Jersey Shore?
• Two of my great-grandmother's nieces in Atlantic City in 1939

Book cover: Ida Chittum's "Tales of Terror" (1975)

• Title: Tales of Terror
• 
  Author: Ida Chittum (1918-2002). According to her profile page on IllinoisAuthors.com, "Ida Chittum was educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse. She was a prolific reader and advocate of literacy. Her love for all living things as well as her warm sense of humor are evident in her many published children's books." She had a talking mynah named Poo Bah and was a friend to stray animals. Her other books included A Nutty Business, Clabber Biscuits, The Empty Grave, Farmer Hoo and the Baboons, The Cat's Pajamas, The Ghost Boy of El Toro, The Hermit Boy, and The Secrets of Madam Renee. (Some of them appear to be quite rare, though, on the used market.) In an article by Mardy Fones that was published in the Oct. 1, 1978, edition of the Decatur Sunday Herald and Review, Chittum explains that she used the front of a brown envelope to rough out chapters and then stored the completed chapters inside, annotated with brightly colored corrections and notes to herself. There are a website and a Facebook page devoted to Chittum's legacy.
• Illustrator: Franz Altschuler (1923-2009)
• Book dimensions: 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches
• Provenance: My copy was previously shelved in the Edmeston Free Library in Edmeston, New York. (The library is inside a gorgeous old building.) Stamps say it was checked out various times between 1980 and 1992.
• Publisher: Rand McNally & Company.
• Series: Rand McNally published Tales of Terror alongside a few other truly spooky books for children in the mid 1970s. The other volumes include Monsters Tales and Horror Tales (both of which I have and both of which are psychedelic collections edited by Roger Elwood) and Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures.
• Publication date: 1975
• Pages: 124
• Format: Hardcover
• Original price: I can't confirm. I saw one reference to $4.95, but that seems a little low, by at least a couple dollars, for a hardcover in 1975.
• List of stories: The House the Dovers Didn't Move Into; Vision of Roses; Uncle Ned Kunkle; The Twins; The Snipe Hunt; The Yellow Cat; Giant; The Feather Reader; The Woman Who Turned to Paper; Sod Miller's Money; Print on the Window; The Haunted Well; The Special Gift; Bring Back My Teeth; The Lovers; the Cruel Girl; The Twisting Wind; and Courtland Wethers and the Pit.
• Excerpt from Ida Chittum's introduction: "These stories of the hills are taken from my childhood in the Ozark mountains, those scenic hills in the south central part of the United States that are now, for the most part, national forests and wildlife conservation areas. There, every visitor was a storyteller — a source of mystery. Having no books I read the folks who came calling of a Sunday afternoon. The hills were fertile grounds for listeners. These are accounts of a passing way of life, stories of a people who lived out their lives never seeing the outside world or expecting to, any more than one sees into heaven before dying. ... In a sense these stories are mysteries — accounts to wonder on and ponder over. They are tales that need telling before they are lost or forgotten."
• More about this book: In the 1978 Decatur Sunday Herald and Review article, Chittum adds: "We lived on a 40-acre fruit and tea farm — that's persimmons and sassafras sprouts — between St. James and Salem, Mo. When you live with people in the country as I did, you become one of them. They're different than city people. They have more time to be closer to nature in every way. ... Where we lived was five miles from any other house so anyone who came through was as welcome as the sunrise, and they had their stories to tell. ... About 50 percent of these stories I know to be true." (Chittum adds in the article that her "know to be true" stories include a personal encounter with Bigfoot.)
• Excerpt #1: "The strange part, though, was how the footprints of Enoch Schradder, a slender man, were sunk so deep in the earth all the way from the ravine into the timber, as if he were carrying a very heavy burden."
• Excerpt #2: "If Sod every changed his aging bib overalls or took a bath in the cheerful creek which tumbled past his shed, no one would have known it from walking downwind of him."
• Excerpt #3: "Folks around about considered it a marvel the way Ada learned to travel in the vast, timbered area without getting lost. They didn't guess her guide was Geoffrey, and she never said, fearing that the slender thread of joy that ran through their friendship might be broken by those who couldn't understand."
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.82 stars (out of 5). One of the highest ratings I've ever seen.
• Goodreads review: In 2020, Maria wrote: "I read this so often my elementary school librarian refused to let me check it out any more. The illustrations are excellent and greatly contribute to the mood of the book. I treasure the copy I have now."
• Rating on Amazon: 5 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2017, Cynthia wrote: "I first read this book when I was in I think third grade. I feel in love with it instantly. It's still one of my very favorites ever."
• 
  Thoughts and memories from The Haunted Closet blog in 2008: "The beautiful, yet vaguely disturbing illustrations perfectly capture the tone of these tales of drowned children, restless ghosts, magic spells and malevolent wildlife." In 2010, one of that blog's commenters added: "When I was younger I lived in southern Illinois, not far from the Ozarks that Ida Chittum depicted. We checked Tales of Terror out of the library over and over and it stuck with me down the years. The stories were weird and eerie but had the ring of truth to them as well. Some were so sad and beautiful and others were full of dark humor. In our family we often refer to Uncle Ned Kunkel as though he were a relative. And that cover with the faceless people and the illustration that goes with the first story about the house that didn't get moved into are still some of the scariest pictures I can dream up." And in 2012 another blog commenter relayed this personal story: "Mrs. Chittum lived down the road from me, in a very tiny town in Illinois. As memory serves (again, from the mind of a very young child) she lived in an old Victorian house. How fitting! I'll have to check facts with my parents to find out if that is true or not! I remember being scared to death after a visit to her home. She told us a story (could have been from one of her books, I don't know) of the monster that would grab the uncovered feet of kids & drag them off, never to be seen again ... I was never so scared in my little life!! I couldn't peddle my bike fast enough to get home ... and to this day, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered!" (For what it's worth, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered, either.)
• This book's availability: In great news, a hardcover reprint is available for the very reasonable price of $22.99 on BookBaby and Amazon. One person writes on Amazon: "I had an old falling-apart copy that was the only one I could possibly afford, due to it being such a rare find, so I was very glad to see this book republished in an affordable volume." Ida Chittum would be rightfully thrilled that in 2026, these tales are not being lost or forgotten.

Saturday's postcards

That's Devo, circa 1978, in the middle bottom.

For Postcard Saturday, here are some of my dandy recent arrivals from fellow Postcrossing members. 

• Lisa, a longtime Hello Kitty fan, writes that she just moved to the Vancouver, Washington, area and enjoys "being out in nature appreciating all the wildlife and beauty," including opossums and bald eagles. 
• Tilly, who sent the postcard in the top center, recently moved from right here in Pinal County to Wisconsin and says she misses the warmth. My response: It's 91 here today, and I'm a little weary of the endless warmth we're now going to have until Halloween or later. Tilly works in the antiques business and doesn't like cold pizza.
• Júlia in Slovakia writes that she loves gardening and talking to her parrots.
• Christa in the Philippines writes: "I was very happy to read your profile, especially where you wrote about accountability & transparency. It is also something we experience (or the lack thereof) in the PH. While I did not end up in journalism, I also enjoy writing (and journaling) as a means to practice good English, and to write about interests."
• Carol, who has sent and received more than 17,000 Postcrossing cards, writes: "First, let me say that I know how important good journalists are these days. I have my favorites. I was dismayed to see that a third of the staff of The Washington Post was laid off. But Bezos hasn't been a friend of the people, anyway. My fav book reviewer, Ron Charles, was laid off so I subscribed to his Substack."
• Renee sent the amazing postcard shown in the lower left above. She writes: "Hello and greetings from Iowa. ... I'm a retired librarian, widow since 2021. ... I share my days now with Sissie my 8 y.o. cocker spaniel and build doll houses." She adds in her profile that she likes books (of course!), playing the guitar and listening to metal turned "up to 11"! 

Finally, here's a lovely illustration of King Ghidorah, that meddling three-headed dragon.   

What George Michael sang 36 years ago

What does it mean when you wake up the in middle of the night and have a song in your head that you haven't thought about in decades? How and why do the brain's electrical byways even dredge up something like that?   

That was George Michael's 1990 lament "Praying for Time" for me, two nights ago. It wasn't even part of a dream, to my knowledge. I just woke up around 3 a.m. when nature called and it was right there, rolling about:

The rich declare themselves poor ... 'Cause God's stopped keeping score

So weird. Yet so timely, perhaps? Michael's commentary was correct for its moment but also prescient about ours.

Speaking about "Praying for Time," he told The New York Times this in 1990: "It’s my way of trying to figure out why it’s so hard for people to be good to each other. I believe the problem is conditional as opposed to being something inherent in mankind. The media has affected everybody’s consciousness much more than most people will admit. Because of the media, the way the world is perceived is as a place where resources and time are running out. We’re taught that you have to grab what you can before it’s gone. It’s almost as if there isn’t time for compassion.” 

This is the year of the guilty man

Your television takes a stand

Fast forward from TV to the internet and endlessly scrolling social media.

Those who once called television a "vast wasteland" had no idea what would follow within a half-century.

Two nights ago I woke up to "Praying for Time." This morning I woke up to another unsurprising war.

The week in images

I thought about doing some short explanatory text, but I'll just let future Papergreat Scholars™ weigh in.