Edward Gorey's fabulous cover art for "The Wanderer"

This one, alas, is not from my personal library or art-covered walls. But it's too great not to share. It's Edward Gorey's cover illustration for the Doubleday Anchor edition of The Wanderer (original French title Le Grand Meaulnes) by Alain-Fournier.

The image is part of a recent article by Huffington Post's Claire Fallon — "Edward Gorey's Forgotten Book Cover Art Will Make You Happy And Afraid." You should check it out to see all the wonderful covers.

A much wider variety of covers are collected in Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art and Design, which was published this year and features an introductory essay by Steven Heller.

Fallon writes on HuffPost:

"Heller notes the clear influence of 19th century cartoons and classical drawing in Gorey’s cover art — the jaunty, loose-limbed figures and pen-and-ink detailing — but his use of space typically lends the antiquated style a different aura. A small figure, dwarfed by a barren landscape in a few, flat colors, signals an ominous isolation that is pure Gorey."

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Randomly, here are a few other great links I've come across this week:

• ProPublica and NPR: How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes
• Bloomberg Business: Who’s Murdering Thousands of Chickens in South Carolina?
• Science: Who's Afraid of Peer Review? A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.
• Smithsonian: Instead of Being Swallowed by a Mine, This Arctic Town is Moving
• CityLab: An Imaginary City, 50 Years in the Mapping

Wanamaker gets hip and other items from a 1970 Delaware County Scene

This advertisement for the John Wanamaker department store in Wilmington, Delaware, appears on the back page of the July/August 1970 issue of Delaware County Scene. Using a hip font, the advertisement declares 1970 to be "a new decade of young now fashions."¹

Wilmington's Wanamaker complex opened in 1950. The building was recently renovated and repurposed to serve as the headquarters of Incyte, a biopharmaceutical firm that, among other things, has developed a drug called Jakafi to treat a rare blood cancer.²

Delaware County Scene was a combination of tourist guide and history guide, filled with local advertisements for the southeastern Pennsylvania county and Delaware. This 24-page issue³ is perfect bound and printed on newsprint.

Silvia Barfield Shay was the editor and publisher of Delaware County Scene, which was published out of Wallingford in cooperation with the Delaware County Tourist Bureau. According to Page 2, its distribution locations included banks, real estate offices, libraries, hospitals, schools, beauty shops, "milk and fuel oil companies," motels and tourist information centers.

Here are some other interesting tidbits from this issue:

• You could rent a Ford Falcon for $9 per day, plus 9 cents per mile, from Drexel Fleets Inc. in Media.
• There is an advertisement for Snowden's, which billed itself as "Media's oldest and most complete department store," having been established in 1868. According to "A Brief History of Media: 1850 to 1900," Snowden's continued in operation until a fire destroyed the West State Street building in 1976.
• The follow is written about the Marrion Blackwell Trio in a section titled "After Dark Discoveries":
  

  "One of the delights of a visit to the Media Inn is the fine entertainment of the Marrion Blackwell Trio, who like 'the man who came to dinner' came to Media for a two weeks contract and has stayed year and year. Mr. Blackwell is a most versatile man on all instruments, and proudly relates to the days in Yankton, S.D. where he appeared with Lawrence Welk - the year 1932. Assisting at the piano is Bobby Jefferson with 'Streamline' Burrell on the drums. Fans came from the tri-state area week after week to enjoy the Marrion Blackwell brand of dance-forever music."

• Carroll W. Griffith Co., a Wilmington-based real-estate company offered: "Complete real estate coverage thru 'Realtron,' (IBM computer for finding homes quickly)."⁴
• Bethany Beach in Delaware was described as follows: "Quiet and picturesque Bethany Beach located between Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City, Md., is experiencing an influx of vacationists, but despite its growth has retained its family type atmosphere, free of crass commercialism, noise and traffic."

Footnotes
1. If you're interested in Wanamaker's history, check out the entries in Papergreat's Wanamaker Series.
2. For more on Incyte, see "Incyte to lease former Wanamaker building near Wilmington" (November 15, 2013, DelawareOnline.com) and "Incyte takes over reimagined Wanamaker building" (November 21, 2014, DelawareOnline.com).
3. The July/August 1970 issue was Vol. 4, No. 3.
4. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association: "The Realtron system was programmed so that members could ask it to produce homes from its memory bank to fit their prospects' needs. Within seconds after the question was posed, the computer would print out or speak to the member about appropriate properties." For more, here's a newspaper article from 1969 with the headline "Real Estate Board Will Use Computer To Locate Homes."

Dilapidated building, Spain Edition

This photo was taken during my grandmother's trip to Spain in 1978. The caption on the back states: "Old abandoned store in little town where we had lunch."

Clearly, I come from a long line of relatives who enjoy Falling Down Things!

Related posts

• Dilapidated structures of Southern Jersey
• The abandoned Great Barrington Fairgrounds (Massachusetts)
• Taftville/Ponemah Mill in eastern Connecticut
• Creepy & dilapidated structures of the eastern United States, Part 1
• Creepy & dilapidated structures of the eastern United States, Part 2
• Old house in Coudersport, Pennsylvania

July 1941 cover of Agricultural Leaders' Digest (plus a tasty recipe)

I don't have any ephemera specifically related to Memorial Day right at hand¹, but I think this works nicely. It's the July 1941 cover of the Agricultural Leaders' Digest², featuring a boy in overalls saluting the American flag while he dog sits nearby.

The magazine had a circulation of just under 29,000 that year, and an annual subscription was $2. Estes P. Taylor was the editor and publisher.

This issue features articles titled:

• Rural Consumers Get Consumer Education
• Paint and Cushions Vamp Up Old Porch Furniture
• Motion Pictures Are Made a Part of Education
• Training Rural Youth for National Defense
• Roofs and Exterior Walls of Red Cedar Shingles
• Women Meet to Improve Bread Making
• Boys and Girls of 4-H Go To College
• At Jelly Time, Rather Be Sure Than Lucky³

Finally, the Cooking Corner contains this nice recipe for Coconut Jam Dainties, if you're looking to whip up a dessert for this evening.

Coconut Jam Dainties
About 15 cakes

• 1 package fast granular yeast
• 3 tblsp. lukewarm water
• ⅓ cup shortening
• ⅔ cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• ½ tsp. lemon extract
• 2 cups flour (sifted)
• ½ cup milk
• 1 cup strawberry jam
• ⅔ cup shredded coconut
• 1 tblsp. powdered sugar

Pour the granular yeast into the 3 tablespoons lukewarm water, add a pinch of the sugar, stir and allow to stand. Cream the shortening, sugar and salt until fluffy. TO this add one egg well beaten, and the lemon extract. Mix the softened yeast with 1/2 cup of the sifted flour and blend with the creamed shortening and sugar. Add the remaining flour and milk alternately, mixing well with each addition. Blend in the beaten yolk of the other egg and when the mixture is smooth, turn into greased muffin tins, filling slightly more than half full. Set to rise in warm place (1⅓ to 2 hours).

Bake at 375 degrees F. for 20-25 minutes. After baking, allow to cool and remove from the tins. Next cover top and sides of cakes with jam and roll the cakes in shredded coconut. Beat the remaining egg white until stiff and stir in the powdered sugar. Top the cakes with this and place in over on a cookie sheet at 350 to 375 degrees F., until meringue is nicely browned. Decorate the cakes with small American flags, and try them on children (ages 6 to 60).

Footnotes
1. You can, however, check out my 2013 post on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
2. Previous Papergreat posts referencing the Agricultural Leaders' Digest include:

• Stock photo of pilgrims and a dead turkey from a 1940 magazine
• An unfortunate 1940 advertisement for white lead paint
• Celebrate Papergreat's 400th post with a gallery of chickens

3. I'm not entirely sure what that means. I guess I could read the article.

From the readers: Indians, color photos, hot dogs and much more

Thank you, as always, for your comments on the various Papergreat posts from throughout the years. I think this is a fun "mailbag" to present for you today, from the home office in York, Pennsylvania. Enjoy!

Straight Arrow Injun-uity card from Nabisco Shredded Wheat: Jim writes: "I ate Shredded Wheat, and collected the cards. I remember that they helped me and inspired me for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I would want to polish off a box of them as soon as they arrived from the A&P, but Dad and Mom enforced patience on me .... circa 1954, West Fitchburg, MA."

[Untitled April 10 post featuring the Indian-head test pattern]: Marty Rotten (possibly not his real name) writes:

"Cheech and Chong c1972:
Cheech: So whatcha watching?
Chong: I'm watching this movie about Indians, but it's really boring.
Cheech: That's not an Indian movie, man. That's a test pattern!"

(This, if you're keeping score at home — and heaven help you if you are — represents the first mention of Cheech & Chong on Papergreat.)

Great links: Prokudin-Gorskii's color photographs of Russia: Similarto writes: "Were these Russian photographer's pictures colored when originally taken or have they been digitally enhanced or improved using some similar technique? Did we have colored pictures in those days?"

Indeed, we did have color photography in the early 20th century, and experiments in color photography date to the mid-1800s. Here's an excerpt from the Library of Congress' description of how the Prokudin-Gorskii color images were created:

"We know that Prokudin-Gorskii intended his photographic images to be viewed in color because he developed an ingenious photographic technique in order for these images to be captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in color in slide lectures using a light-projection system involving the same three filters."

Here are more Prokudin-Gorskii color photographs, from a January post.

Front covers and opening passages from four old books: Bessie Blue writes: "Great site! Love these vintage series, especially Grace Harlowe."

1907 postcard: Nubilous but moonlit sky hangs over riverside town: Mom writes: "I'm voting for Linden Hall in Centre County for this postmark. I graduated from Linden Hall in Lititz a long time ago, and I never heard that the school ever had its own post office. We had individual mail boxes but they were only for sorting."

Six illustrations from 1920's "Primer of Sanitation": Joan writes, in all caps: "IS THIS BOOK STILL IN THE HOUSE??? If so I want it!!!"

Everyone will be happy to know that the sanitation book has been bequeathed to Joan, and it now sits in a spot of honor on her desk at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey. I'm pretty sure she's the only one in the building who has this particular volume in his or her office.

Obscure nostalgia: 1970s plastic mugs from Whirley Industries: Dawn Sanders writes: "My mom has one and [her] grandson loves it. He is only 8 months old. The 'Hands Off My Mug.' Wish that there was a way to get a replacement top."

1936's "Albanian Wonder Tales": Frontispiece and endpapers: Anonymous writes: "Post Wheeler was a member of The Pilgrims Society, which constitutes the secret 'Senate' of the world's big rich, as conceived by Cecil Rhodes in the 1870s to be 'a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world.' (Review of Reviews, May 1902, pp 556-558.)"

Note: I cannot confirm the above information. I'm just passing it along. For more information, please contact your neighborhood Illuminati representative.

Card for a free game of Skilo at Palisades Amusement Park: Anonymous writes: "I worked at Skilo 1968-1971. ... I still have my employee admission card."

Book cover: "Six Little Bunkers at Miller Ned's": Barbara Peters writes: "Wonderful stories for your boy\girl. I really like them. Thank you for posting it."

Victorian trade card for George Boepple, bologna manufacturer: Jann Bauer writes: "Jacob Bauer mentioned above was my grandfather, I remember going to his store in Worcester when I was four years old. That is a strange card for sure!"

Silver Floss sauerkraut and the Pennsylvania Casserole: Anonymous writes: "What's holding up the hot dogs?!!"

(Please direct that question and all other questions about gravity-defying meat to The Pilgrims Society.)

Coupons from the E.H. Koester Bakery Co.: Alice Crowell writes: "My dad worked there. He went by the nickname of Hump."

Cheerful Card Company can help you earn extra money for the holidays: Responding to The Post That Keeps Giving, "Mkay" writes: "I sold 'em too! I am 55 now ... did this door to door til I was old enuf to make money babysitting. Loved it!!"

***
Finally, a woman named Sandi sent me a wonderful email about Papergreat, which she said I was free to share here:

Hi Chris,
I too love old books and pictures, old cards and letters, and all the rest of the random bits and pieces that tell of another life in another time. I have been following your page for a while, and I love reading about your discoveries and your speculations on their histories, along with the facts you can dig up.

Two days ago, I happened on a box of old greeting cards at a flea market, and my friend and I spent a lovely evening reading through the years as tracked by the Easter and birthday cards that Mabel sent to her sister Ethel. There were also a handful of cards from Ethel's lodge sisters, the occasional thank you card for a gift sent, and invitations to bridal and baby showers, as well as a postcard from a couple on their honeymoon.

It was a magical journey, but just as much fun as reading their exchanges was seeing these beautifully preserved old cards, dating from the late 1930s through the mid 1960s.

Thanks for making me feel less like a freak. :)
Sandi

We're not freaks! Thanks for writing, Sandi. I appreciate that you took the time to write and share your thoughts about ephemera and Papergreat. That sounds like a great find you came across. I still get energized by this hobby/passion, even when I don't have as much time to devote to it as I might like. The "every piece of paper tells a story" motto rings so true, especially when it comes to things like the postcards and letters and book inscriptions and greeting cards. It's our time machine into the past.

Stuff from 505: "Woman Reading" by Pieter Janssens Elinga

Now that we have successfully completed the clean-out and move-out of my mom's house in southeastern Pennsylvania (which had been in the family since the 1950s and was mostly filled with stuff put there by my grandmother and great-grandparents), I have a ridiculous amount of new "old stuff" to write about here.¹ I think I'll come up with a new Label² to delineate items that fall into this category. "Stuff from 505" — 505 being the house number — is one Label possibility, but maybe that's a bit to obscure. Then again, this whole blog is obscure.

I'll think of something this week.

There have already been a few 2015 posts which would fall into this new category — "Revolving Poker Rack," "Mystery tiny notepad" and "Luckyday buttons," for example.

Today's item is a small piece of wood, about the size of a baseball card, upon which has been placed an image of a woman sitting in a room and reading a book.

A little easy research has determined that this is a cropped version of Woman Reading, which was painted by Pieter Janssens Elinga sometime around 1668 to 1670.

This painting joins a nice collection of Papergreat-curated illustrations of girls and women reading books:

• Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer
• Around the World with Hob
• Georgina Finds Herself
• A Dark and Stormy Night
• Judy Garland, a black cat and a ghost book

So, on that note, share what you're reading this weekend in the Comments section!

Footnotes
1. Of course, the Papergreat backlog was already borderline ridiculous, though I was chipping away at it. Now it's back to full-blown ridiculous.
2. Labels are those category links you see at the bottom of each post.

Vintage Scholastic cover: Revolt on Alpha C

If this book, Revolt on Alpha C, had been on my shelves last autumn when I was putting together the epic Scholastic Fest countdown of my Top 25 favorite covers, I think it would have had a great shot of finishing in the top 10. But, since it only joined the shelves this year, the book will have to experience a lifetime of regret for what could have been. (Assuming books can experience regret, which is unlikely. So never mind.)

In lieu of official glory, however, let's chat about this mid-century volume a bit.

This is the August 1962 second printing of a TAB Books paperback published for Scholastic Book Services as TX137. Revolt on Alpha C was written by Robert Silverberg, who is coincidentally also the author of Scholastic Fest's #1 book — Lost Race of Mars.

Revolt on Alpha C was illustrated by William Meyerriecks. There's not much information out there on Meyerriecks, but this is certainly a great cover. Another Scholastic cover he is credited with is Spooky Magic.

This book was Silverberg's first published novel, originally coming out when he was 19 or 20. According to a description of the novel on Majipoor.com ("The Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg Web Site")...

"Revolt on Alpha C is not a major work by any standard, but as Silverberg's first novel it does occupy a cherished place in the history of science fiction. It contains many of the hallmarks of his later work (distrust of authority, questioning of tradition), but in embryonic form, showing more promise than accomplishment. In spite of its shortcomings, it has been reprinted many times (including an unknown number of printings by SBS with different covers) and translated into foreign languages."

Amusingly, the novel features a character named Harl Ellison — a tribute to Silverberg's neighbor, Harlan Ellison. (Man, what was in the tap water in that neighborhood!?)

Here's an excerpt featuring the opening passage of Silverberg's rookie novel:

"The stopover at Pluto was brief, but for Larry Stark it seemed to be much too long. The Carden and its crew had spent a week on the cold, small planet at the outermost edge of the solar system, making the necessary change-over to overdrive. This was the second stop on a journey that would take him to the fourth planet of the star Alpha Centauri, four and a half light-years away."

33 years in perspective: It was really all about a monkey washing a cat