"Suzi and the Milestone" — helping to market Stel-Mar postcards

Here's a postcard oddity that might be among the last of its kind. (I can't find any others like it online.) This 1960s sample postcard was used to advertise the services of Stel-Mar, a long-gone company that was based in Mount Joy, Lancaster County.

According to the reverse side of the postcard, Stel-Mar offered "black & white postcards in quantities from 250 at low cost."

The Etchtone cards (using the halftone technique, as you can see in the closeup at right) could be made from photographs or negatives.

I wonder if Suzi, wearing her monogrammed blouse, was a Stel-Mar employee. Either way, it's an interesting photograph that they used for the marketing materials, what with Suzi grinning and holding a fold-out map while sitting on the grass near her bicycle and a mile marker.

Is that an authentic milestone? Do any Lancaster County residents out there recognize its shape and style?

(Full disclosure: When I first saw this postcard, I thought Suzi was sitting next to a gravestone. The flowers sprouting up right in front of it didn't help.)

"Donegal Fairy Stories" by Seumas MacManus

This is the cover of my edition of Donegal Fairy Stories by Seumas MacManus. I discovered it at a used bookstore in Lancaster about a year ago. Coincidentally, there are a Donegal borough and Donegal Township here in Lancaster County; they're both named after the ancient Donegal in Ireland, which is the setting of these folk tales.

Author MacManus lived from 1869 to 1960. He was a poet and storyteller. According to Wikipedia, he is "considered by many to be the last great seanchaí, or storyteller of the ancient oral tradition. He wrote down and interpreted traditional stories so that they would not be lost to future generations." That puts him in league with the likes of his contemporary, Ruth Manning-Sanders (1886-1988), whose own reach for folk tales to retell spanned the globe.

Here is Macmanus, in his own words, describing how he came to be a seanchaí:

"I am of the mountain people. As a buachaill of a boy I herded on the hills, spaded on the farm, dallied to the mountain school where I got the daub of schooling that is mine. At night I moved from cottage to cottage, squatted in the groups that always surrounded the big, blazing turf-fires, hearkening to the women telling their fairy stories and the old men reciting ancient folk tales, singing the old songs, or chanting some thousand-year-old poem.

"Ere I crept out of childhood I was myself a shanachie — carried in mind and could tell a sheaf of the old tales, as I had learned them by a hundred firesides. I told the tales to the lads who companied me to the herding, the lads who with me scudded three miles over the hills to Mass on Sunday, to the lads who loitered with me to the little school."

Donegal Fairy Stories was first published in 1900. It has gone through many editions. I believe this one is from the 1940s. It is part of the "Travel and Adventure Library for Young Folks" and the title page states: "This special edition is published by arrangement with the publishers of the regular edition Doubleday & Company, Inc. by E.M. Hale and Company, Eau Claire, Wisconsin."

The snazzy green-and-yellow endpapers, meanwhile, indicate that this was also a Cadmus Books title...

The 256-page book contains only 10 tales. These are longer stories, and they have wonderful titles, such as:

• The Amadan of the Dough
• Manis the Miller
• Hookedy-Crookedy
• The Bee, the Harp, the Mouse and the Bum-Clock
• The Old Hag's Long Leather Bag

I give it the highest recommendation. If you're intrigued, a newer version of this book, with "modern language, punctuation and word usage" from editor Joseph Greenleaf, is available for a very reasonable price in paperback and e-book editions.

Four cool vintage workplace photos

I have no idea when or where these black-and-white photographs are from. The only thing on the back of them is "FOLDER NO. 1092."

They're really cool, though, especially when you magnify them to check out all of the details in the nooks and crannies of these workplace settings. (Click on them to magnify.)

The large sheet of paper in the center of the above photograph states:

"SHARE
COMMUNITY
WELFARE CAMPAIGN
NOV. 1-21"

Here's one of the cool details from that last photo...

Liebig's strange trees (merkwürdige bäume) of the world, Part 2

Following up on Sunday's post, here are two more images featuring Strange Trees from Liebig's German-language vintage advertising trade cards.

Die grosse Lindevon
Schloss Augustusburg (Sachsen)

This mighty tree, the Great Lime of Augustusburg, is located at Augustusburg Castle (also known as Augustusburg Hunting Lodge) in Saxony, Germany.

It is one of numerous ancient lime trees in Germany. According to the German-language Wikisource, it was planted in the early 1400s and predates the castle. The tree and its heavy horizontal branches were first supported with a wooden grid around 1549. The support structure was modified and replaced many times over the centuries and also included a copper dome at one point. In 1891, a tornado damaged part of the support structure, including brick pillars around the base, and the great lime also lost several primary branches. (This illustration might have been made before that storm damage.)

Cypresse bei Oajaca
(Mexico)

This storied tree has its own Wikipedia page. It is El Árbol del Tule, and it is generally thought to be 1,400 to 1,600 years old. It is located in the small town of Santa María del Tule, about six miles east of Oaxaca. It has a "smoothed-out" diameter of 30.8 feet, making it the stoutest known tree in the world, wider than the mightiest giant sequoia.

Sadly, El Árbol del Tule is said to be slowly dying, on account of water shortages, pollution and nearby traffic.

Here is a 2005 photograph of the tree, via Wikipedia...

"12-05oaxaca093" by Bobak Ha'Eri at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:12-05oaxaca093.jpg#/media/File:12-05oaxaca093.jpg

Liebig's strange trees (merkwürdige bäume) of the world, Part 1

Back in November, I posted for the first time about Liebig's colorful and abundant trade card sets, which were produced for more than a century, from the 1870s through 1970s. More than 11,000 unique cards were published and most were issued in multiple languages. They came in themed sets (or series) of 6 or 12 cards. One great place to start for more information about the cards is the Cartolino website.

One set, which I believe included six cards, was titled Strange Trees¹ (Merkwürdige Bäume in German). I have four of those cards and will be featuring two today and two later this week (hopefully tomorrow).

First up is this card featuring Mammutbaum, also known as Sequoiadendron giganteum, and best known to us as the towering giant sequoias of California.

The second card is a beautiful mystery. It appears to be a religious structure built within a huge, dead tree.

The text on the card is:

Baum mit kleinen
Tempeln
in T-tsin-pu (China)
Baum mit kleinen Tempeln translates to "tree with small temples."

But I can't find much more about where this amazing edifice is or if it still exists. The only other lead I have at the moment is that the image of the "treehouse" also appears in Globus: illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde (illustrated magazine for country and Ethnology), a German-language publication from the 1880s.

Footnote
1. Other Liebig sets of strange things included Strange Insects, Strange Feminine Hairstyles, Strange Dwellings and Strange Mammals.

Mystery vintage photo of figure on snowy steps

We haven't had even a hint of winter yet in southcentral Pennsylvania. So we'll have to settle for vintage photographs of snow. This sepia-toned shot measures four inches wide and features snow-covered outdoor steps, a figure who appears to be using a shovel and bushes and branches weighed down with wet snow.

To me, it looks like it's a photograph of a photograph. In the lower right, down the steps, there is cursive writing that must have appeared on the original photo. It states:

Merry
Xmas
Lairdis [or Laindis, or Lairdia, or Laindia, or Lairdie or Laindie]

There's a date in the extreme lower right. But I cannot decipher it with any certainty. The second number is either an 8 or 9. The third number might be a 1 or 4 or 8.

1880s? 1910s? 1940s? [1940s was my first gut instinct, but the more I looked at it, the less I was sure.]

There's nothing written on the back of the photograph, so we have no further clues to go by.

What do you think?

Related snow posts

• Vintage photographs of kids playing in the snow
• Vintage snapshot of a man, a woman and a snow shovel
• More snow in southcentral Pennsylvania
• Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow.
• Old photo stirs up a blizzard of mystery
• Two postcards of Japan's Kinkaku-ji (Rokuon-ji) in winter
• Saturday's postcard: Sami girl and a reindeer

Nengajō postcard from Japan to celebrate the new year

I received this dandy postcard this week through Postcrossing, and it's a good one to post on New Year's Day. It's a nengajō (年賀状), which is a traditional New Year's postcard sent in Japan.

According to Nippon.com, a website about Japanese culture:

"The practice of sending New Year greetings is believed to date back to the eighth century in Japan, but there is no record of who sent the first greeting or when. The custom is thought to have grown out of the social convention of sending written seasonal salutations when people were unable to make personal visits. Today nengajō, or New Year’s cards, fulfill a similar role to the Christmas card in other countries, although they are sent out in much larger numbers and typically come in the form of postcards. On average, each household will receive around 50–100 nengajō. ... Rather than deliver them early, post offices hold on to nengajō cards so they can distribute them on the morning of January 1. In a traditional ritual of the New Year period, workers and temporary staff at the more than 20,000 post offices around the country hold an early morning ceremony before taking bundles of cards to local households by van, motorbike, or bicycle."

What a wonderful tradition!

Read more on this topic at Nippon.com, Wikipedia, and The Japan Times, which detailed nengajō do’s and don’ts in an article last month.

Have a Happy New Year. And consider making 2016 a year in which you write and send more letters and postcards!

Who wants sauerbraten, bacon muffins & tangle britches?

I've had far too few recipes posts on Papergreat this year. This is only the fifth one. I resolve to do much better in 2016! (That won't be my only official resolution, though.)

So let's close out 2015 with some recipes from Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking, a 48-page staplebound booklet distributed by the Dutchcraft Company of Gettysburg many, many moons ago.

First, an excerpt from the booklet's unattributed introduction:

"The Pennsylvania Dutch are a hard working people and as they say, 'Them that works hard, eats hearty.' The blending of recipes from their many home lands and the ingredients available in their new land produced tasty dishes that have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. Their cooking was truly a folk art requiring much intuitive knowledge, for recipes contained measurements such as 'flour to stiffen,' 'butter the size of a walnut,' and 'large as an apple.' Many of the recipes have been made more exact and standardized providing us with a regional cookery we can all enjoy."

And now some recipes!

Sauerbraten
2 inch thick piece of chuck, pot roast or tender boiling beef. Place in dish or bowl and cover with solution of half vinegar and half water, put in two large onions sliced. Do this two or three days before the meat is wanted. On the day before it is to be cooked cut 3 or 4 slices of bacon in 1" pieces and chop fine 1 tablespoon of the onion which has been soaking in the vinegar. Cut holes in the meat 1 or 2 inches apart and stuff bits of bacon and chopped onion into the holes. Put the meat back in the solution, add 1 tablespoon whole cloves and 1 teaspoon whole allspice. Bake the meat as a pot roast in part of the solution, until tender. Use more of the solution, adding sugar to taste, in making the gravy which will be almost black.

Apple Ring Fritters

• 1 cup sifted flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup milk
• 1 egg
• 4 large apples

Sift dry ingredients. Add milk and egg. Beat well. Peel and core apples and slice in rings about ¼ inch thick. Dip rings in batter and drop into skillet containing ½ inch of hot melted shortening. Fry until golden brown on both sides. Drain on paper towel. Mix sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle over fritters. Makes 16 to 20.

Bacon Muffins

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 3 tablespoons melted shortening
• 1 cup milk
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• ½ cup bits crisp bacon

Sift flour, add sugar, salt and baking powder and sift again, add beaten egg and milk. Add melted shortening beating in quickly. Add bits of crisped bacon. Bake in hot (425 degree) oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Serve with orange marmalade.

Tangle Britches
An old York County recipe

• ½ pound butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 6 eggs, beaten
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
• about 5 cups flour

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs beating well. Sift in the cinnamon and enough flour to make a stiff dough. Roll out the dough very thin on a floured board to about ⅛ inch thick. Cut into rectangular pieces 3 inches by 5 inches. Make 5 cuts lengthwise in the dough ½ inch apart and 4½ inches long, so that the rectangle remains in one piece. Fry in hot deep fat (360 F) for 2 minutes or until they bob up to the top of the hot grease. When dropping them in the fryer, pick up the 1st, 3rd and 5th strips and pull them upward. Let the 2nd, 4th and 6th sag downward so that in frying they get all fahuudelt (tangled) or as the Dutch say, all through each other. Dust with powdered sugar or dribble molasses over them and eat hot.

(That last one sounds a bit like funnel cake. Read some Tangle Britches memories at Helen Gobble's Bits and Pieces and More.)

Related goodies (mostly Pennsylvania Dutch)

• Pennsylvania Dutch recipe for funeral pie (aka raisin pie)
• Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine: Schnitz and knepp recipe on old napkin
• Cooking up some calf's head soup, pawnhaas, tzitterli and streivlin
• Enjoy a couple "Best-Loved Pennsylvania Dutch Recipes"
• Selections from 1929's "Pennsylvania State Grange Cook Book"