From the readers: Rover Boys, stamps, school memories and more

It's time for another "mailbag" from the home office in York, Pennsylvania. As always, these are actual comments from actual readers of Papergreat. (If I was making them up, that would be just about the saddest thing ever, don't you think?)

Selections from the 1967 Top Value Stamps catalog: There were two new comments on this post:

• Sharon writes: "Has anyone found where to redeem their stamp books? Really interested. Would love to know. I ended up on this site because I was researching an ancient looking Cynthia Mills mending thread pack I found in my Aunt Margie's sewing stuff. It dates back to the '30s or 40s. I am amazed at how old this stuff has gotten in my lifetime. About 30 years ago, I would have thrown things like this away. Now I treasure them."
• Anonymous writes: "I just acquired 15 books of Top Value stamps and I cant find where to redeem them. Green stamps wont accept them. Any ideas?"

There are probably people out there with more information and, if so, please add a note in the Comments below or email me at chrisottopa@gmail.com. Here's what I know. The most popular kind of trading stamps, S&H Green Stamps, can still be redeemed, for greenpoints. For a time, S&H also gave out greenpoints for Top Value stamps, but ceased that practice in 2010.

I am not aware of any current company that redeems Top Value stamps. If you want a make a few bucks (literally) off them, however, one suggestion would be to sell them on eBay, as some people collect them. (People collecting old paper — imagine that!)

The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch: Angela Kenney writes: "I have a hardback copy of The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch. Do you know how I can find out the value of this book?"

We would need to know the book's condition and whether the dust jacket is still intact and what condition it's in. This is not, however, considered a rare volume. If there's no dust jacket, I'm guessing the most the book is worth is about $5. If it has an original dust jacket that's in nice condition, my guess is that it could increase the value to $20 to $30, but you might want to take it to a dealer who specializes in these kind of books.

1953 envelope from the Around-The-World Shoppers Club: Anonymous writes: "My mother belonged to that club. She got some AMAZING gifts, some of which I still have! One was a little perfume bottle, blue glass with silver overlay and a small funnel — perfume was inside. I often see it on eBay or in antique stores. I also remember a small blue Delft lamp from Holland. I wondered what had happened to the club. Thanks for the info!"

Peeking inside a circa-1940 Shippensburg High gradebook: An anonymous commenter wrote: "Just found this totally randomly while looking for a picture of the now-demolished school, which is where I went to JHS (a new high school had been built by then). Some 17 years after this gradebook was in use, Dr. Jack Hargleroad delivered me at Chambersburg Hospital. His classmate Dorothy Hubley was my elementary school principal, and several other people listed above were friends of my parents, who moved to town in the 50's and were professors at what is now Shippensburg University. Thanks for posting!"

A few hours later, the same commenter returned with additional information: "My sister just sent me a ref showing that 'Paggy' Wise's (nee Hargleroad) real first name was 'Pague.' I knew her as a JHS PE teacher and had always assumed it was 'Peg.' A quick check of a US first-names site lists just one living person with that first name."

I'm so happy when people find Papergreat posts through search and stumble upon a piece of their past. This commenter has added to the discussion/history with the information about Paggy/Pague. I would have never guessed that Pague was a first name. Sadly, I can also add that Pague Hargleroad Wise died in 2003 at age 79. Here's the obituary.

Snazzy 1960s postcard of a historic Chicago hotel: Anonymous writes: "Hi, I have a copy of this postcard. You can see it here http://rocksandtime.blogspot.com/ The card is used and the message is interesting. Yoshi is was in Chicago and is traveling to LA, San Francisco and then Hawaii and Japan. He mailed it to a woman in Cincinnati and used a West Virginia stamp. I am fascinated by these little time travelers. Thanks for your interesting blog."

Saturday's postcard #1: Cute cotton girl in the South: Anonymous writes: "Ironic that it is a white girl 'picking' cotton. Don't imagine that happened much here in South Carolina."

Point taken.

Postcard: The Haunted Room in the Mint House, Pevensey: Messianic Light writes: "I have a possibly brass ashtray featuring Ye Olde Mint House and Merry Andrew with no idea how old it is or how much it may be worth. I also have a Pevensey Castle pamphlet reprinted 1951."

I hope Yuriy Sosnitskiy becomes a famous artist: Yuriy and Nataly reply: "Thank you, Chris, for such wonderful words!'

My pleasure! I hope that I can become one of your patrons some day!

Miniature photographs from 1930s New York City: Anonymous writes: "Very cool! I plan to use these to launch a reading inquiry unit about the 1930s with my class. Thanks!"

I'm thrilled to see Papergreat being used for educational purposes!

Echte Wagner advertising card featuring Die Heinzelmännchen

This old advertising card, featuring a group of Heinzelmännchen (brownies or house gnomes) fleeing a house, is just one in a long series of collectible cards published by German company Echte Wagner in the first half of the 20th century. Echte Wagner made margarine, and it made a lot of trade cards. The one shown here is the sixth card in the eighth series of the third album. So, yes, there were many. If you do a Google Image search for Echte Wagner cards, you'll see what I mean. Pictured at right is the cover of the second Echte Wagner album.

There were hundreds of Echte Wagner trading cards, and they were focused on numerous topics, including folklore, transportation, outer space and more.

According to one poster in a forum on www.cigarettecardcollecting.com:

"The Wagner company issued several albums of cards between the wars. Some cards are Liebig-sized, others are smaller. Generally they were in sets of 6 like Liebig although they are usually referred to by the album number. ... The so-called Kaufmannsbilder, which you could translate as merchants cards, i.e. trade cards, were very common in Germany pre-ww1. Larger companies produced their own. Smaller companies could have their names printed on 'generic' cards. Individual retailers could buy blank cards and apply their rubber stamp to them. ...

Wagner issued:
1928 Album 1 180 cards
1929 Album 2 216 cards
1931 Album 3 216 cards
1932 Album 4 "Aus Forst und Flur" 240 cards
1932 Album 5 "Wilde Tiere in ihrer Heimat" 240 cards
1932 Wagner's Märchenbuch 24 cards

They also issued some albums post-war in 1951
Schelme und Narren 96 cards
Deutsches Denken und Schaffen 96 cards
Wer lacht mit, lustiges Sprichwörterbuch 144 cards
Abenteurer und Entdecker 1 96 cards
Abenteurer und Entdecker 2 96 card"

So, this Die Heinzelmännchen card was just one of 216 published in 1931.

There's a short story on the back of the card, in German. The title is Die Heinzelmännchen kommen nicht wieder, which translates to "The brownies will not come back."

According to Wikipedia:

"The Heinzelmännchen are a race of creatures appearing in a tale connected with the city of Cologne in Germany. The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day. According to the legend, this went on until a tailor's wife got so curious to see the gnomes that she scattered peas onto the floor of the workshop to make the gnomes slip and fall. The gnomes, being infuriated, disappeared and never returned. From that time on, the citizens of Cologne had to do all their work by themselves."

So that's clearly what has happened in the illustration on this card, as the woman has spread peas all over the floor, bringing an end to the good times for Cologne.

More stuff from my grandmother's 1978 trip to Spain

Back on May 25, I had a quickie post featuring one of my grandmother's photos from her 1978 trip to Spain. Here are a couple more items of ephemera related to that trip thirty-seven years ago.

First up is some letterhead from "Hotel De Los Reyes Catolicos" in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. This is actually Hostal dos Reis Católicos, a 15th century edifice that was once a hospital and is now a luxury hotel that features a restaurant in what was once the hospital morgue.

In her hard-to-decipher handwriting, my grandmother refers to herself in the third person and states:

"Helen stayed here — Spain — refurbished hospital — (run by monks [?]) — during Queen Isabella & King Ferdinand time — (end of [?] pilgrimage)"

Here is the hotel's current website, if you're planning a trip. The hotel notes that its restaurant offers "dishes created using fish and seafood from the rias of Galicia, beef and vegetables paired with traditional cheeses such as O Cebreiro, and exquisite desserts like filloas (crêpes) filled with apple compote and crème brûlée or traditional tarta de Santiago (almond cake)"

Meanwhile, here's another snapshot from my grandmother's trip. A guy on the donkey. Nicely framed shot, too. I'm guessing it was taken from the back window of the tour bus.

Friday mélange: Spaceship York, Love & Mercy, and a black butterfly

An assortment of news, updates and quick thoughts on this Friday morning...

Encourage good movies: We pretty much get the movies that we deserve, which is why most multiplexes are filled with Jurassic World, Spy, San Andreas¹, Tomorrowland, Entourage and their brethren at the moment.

But there are high-quality movies out there, even in the summer, and they need our support if we want more of them in the future. Love & Mercy, the story of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, is, by most reviews, one of those movies. (And it has a gorgeous poster, to boot.) A.O. Scott of The New York Times provides just one of the ebullient reviews, explaining why this isn't your standard music biopic.

Here's the movie's trailer...



And, yes, they had me at "God Only Knows," which Sir Paul McCartney has called his favorite song. Here, by the way, are two cover versions you might like...





But I digress. If you're at all interested in the subject matter, go see Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy. So we can get more smart movies like it.

* * *
In early May, I wrote about "Spaceship York," an community art project sending hopes, dreams and ephemera into outer space. Last week, the project culminated with its launch, which was termed "awesome" and "amazing" by spectators. Here's the video, from the York Daily Record/Sunday News...



* * *
Last week I received a wonderful postcard and Writing Challenge through Postcrossing. Esther from the Netherlands mailed me a postcard featuring a South American black/grey butterfly called Asterope optima. Her note stated:

"What if this beautiful butterfly would be a dark wizard or bad witch? I saw the postcard and thought of a new fairytale about a mysterious butterfly luring people deeper and deeper into the woods. Maybe you can write about it on your blog."

Challenge accepted! I'm working on a fairy tale² about the black butterfly and will post it here when it's finished. Here's hoping I can channel my inner Ruth Manning-Sanders.

Footnotes
1. Full disclosure: Ashar and I saw and enjoyed this throwback to Irwin Allen disaster movies. I mean, who's going to say no to The Rock? But the main point about also supporting quality movies still stands.
2. Ashar is serving as a creative consultant.

RIP, Sir Christopher Lee, champion of literature

He was Dracula and Dooku. He was Saruman and Scaramanga.

But actor Christopher Lee, whose death Sunday at age 93 was announced today, was much more than just fangs, blood and bad guys.

“Please don’t describe me in your article as a ‘horror legend,’" he asked a reporter for The Telegraph in 2011.

So, setting aside the cinematic creatures of the night, here are some bookish things you might not have known about Christopher Lee:

1. He was fully or partially fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Russian, Greek, and Mandarin Chinese.¹

2. Lee once met educator and ghost-story author M.R. James (1862-1936). The Book of Ghost Stories, an early 1980s volume dedicated to James' works, includes a short tribute to James, penned by Lee. An excerpt:

"Although Mr. James is often mentioned in the same breath as those other famous writers of the supernatural, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, he was, in my opinion, the greatest of them all. He was certainly the most erudite, and his literary style was quite the purest. ... I must just add that for me Dr. James's work is the equivalent in cinematic terms with the films of the French director, Claude Chabrol, who is a also a master of atmospheric invocation, creating situations apparently so ordinary yet by the slightest twist making them frighten you to death!"²

3. There are conflicting accounts about the true size of Lee's home library. (One disputed statistic that gained steamed online in recent years was that he had 12,000 occult books. That seems unlikely.) But, numbers aside, there is little doubt he was an avid reader and book collector.

4. Lee once met J.R.R. Tolkien and was a serious fan and scholar of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It has been reported that he "was such a mammoth Tolkien fan that he re-read the fantasy books every year without fail." In a 2010 interview with Lawrence French of Cinefantastique, Lee said:

"I still think THE LORD OF THE RINGS is the greatest literary achievement in my lifetime. Like so many other people, I couldn’t wait for the second, and then the third book. Nothing like it had ever been written. Other authors like T. H. White and Lewis Carroll invented imaginary worlds, but Tolkien not only invented an imaginary world, he invented imaginary races, which you can easily believe in. And he created very long appendices with all the family trees and the names of the previous Kings and so-forth. It’s quite incredible, really, the scholarship and imagination that went into the writing of it. And what is even more remarkable is that Tolkien, who was a professor of philology, invented new languages."

5. Another author Lee admired was Dennis Wheatley.³ Lee helped bring Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out to the screen in 1968, and it was one of the biggest critical successes in the storied time that Lee and Hammer Films worked together. (Lee, by the way, was the hero for once in that movie adaptation.)

6. Lee shared the same birthday (May 27) and a friendship with Vincent Price, another horror icon who had so many interests beyond vampires and ghouls. Price published books about cooking and antiques, and Lee had a music career that spanned opera and heavy metal, with some history of Charlemagne woven in.

* * *
Finally, here's a photo of Lee in one of his last major roles, as kindly and generous bookshop owner Monsieur Labisse in Martin Scorsese's 2011 film Hugo.

Footnotes
1. Meanwhile, I can count to 20 in Spanish and to three in Japanese.
2. In 2000, BBC presented a four-episode mini-series, Ghost Stories for Christmas, in which Lee portrays James and reads ghost stories to a group of rapt students.
3. Some fun connections: Wheatley had a series of World War II thrillers, featuring a character named Gregory Sallust, that served as an inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Meanwhile, Lee was related, in a way, to Fleming. Lee's mother's second husband was Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, who was Fleming's uncle. That made Lee and Fleming step-cousins.

Saturday's postcard #4: France's Mont Saint-Michel in the snow

• Title: Le Mont Saint-Michel (Manche)
• Caption on back of card: Le Mont sous la Neige ("Mount in the Snow")
• Publisher: Les Editions d'Art Yvon, Paris, 15, rue Martel. (Note the word Yvon on the lower-right corner of the front of the postcard.)
• Year: None listed.
• Used: Not really. Someone scrawled "14 July 1961" on the back, in light pencil.
• Comments: I didn't consciously plan it this way, but here we are back at Normandy to conclude this Very Mini Blogathon on D-Day. This card shows historic and beautiful Le Mont-Saint-Michel covered in a bit of snow. ... According to MetroPostcard.com, Edition d’Art Yvon, led by founder/photographer Pierre Yves Petit, began business as a postcard publisher in 1919. The Yvon images are still reprinted and sold on postcards today. ... Mont Saint-Michel has been featured in two previous Papergreat posts: In April 2013 and June 2013.

Saturday's postcard #3: 1967 Oldsmobile Custom Vista-Cruiser

• Title: 1967 Oldsmobile Custom Vista-Cruiser
• Caption on back of card: Same as the front.
• Publisher: None listed.
• Year: None listed, but 1967 would make sense, no?
• Used: No.
• Comments: The only other identifying information on the back of this postcard is "Litho U.S.A. 25-B-114." Plugging that into Google gets a big whiff. Presumably this was a promotional postcard used by Oldsmobile and/or auto dealers. ... The Vista-Cruiser, which was about as long as a Star Destroyer, was produced by GM's Oldsmobile division from 1964 until 1977, according to Wikipedia. Maybe your family had one? The 1967 model was part of the "First Generation." ... Here's a YouTube video by Miguel Caparros that shows off the 1967 vehicle (ski family not included)...

Saturday's postcard #2: "Greetings from New Bloomfield, PA"

• Title: Greetings from New Bloomfield, PA
• Caption on back of card: None.
• Publisher: NYCE?
• Year: None listed.
• Used: Yes.
• Comments: These old linen postcards came printed with "Greetings from" followed by the name of every city, town, village and hamlet imaginable. The colorful scenes of country roads and automobiles were generic and not specific to the area that the "Greetings from" were coming from. ... So this one sends greetings from New Bloomfield, which is a tiny borough of about 1,000 people in Perry County, Pennsylvania. According to Wikipedia, "The official name of the borough is Bloomfield. However the United States Postal Service, presumably to avoid confusion with the neighborhood of Pittsburgh which is also named Bloomfield, refers to the area as 'New Bloomfield.'" ... The postcard is described as part of the "'NYCE' Quality Colored Landscape Locals" series on the back. There was a NYCE Manufacturing Co. in Vernfield, Pennsylvania, that made postcards. (Vernfield is an unincorporated place near another unincorporated place, Harleysville, in Montgomery County. Seems that's an area that would be worth some more investigation.) ... This postcard was mailed to Mrs. Lester Bean of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1955, with the following punctuation-free note:
  

  "Hi Mom
  Well I am up here in the mountains again it is nice up here See you Sunday to get up on the news around there
  'Mom' Mamma"

  ... The postcard was mailed with a red, two-cent Thomas Jefferson stamp. ... Blank "Greetings from" postcards, by the way, are excellent to use for requesting Summer Tickets to the Late Show at the Ed Sullivan Theater.