Effie Hopkins' Surprising Treasures

I'm still working away at the Effie Hopkins treasure.

Effie, you remember, was the wife of Nephi Hopkins, a North Ogden farmer. In the 1930s she filled two large steel boxes with news clips and other stuff. After she died her kids got the boxes and after they died the boxes ended up, somehow, at Union Station.

What's fun is that a lot of the things Effie tossed into the boxes are the day-to-day ephemera that most people chuck. That's why those things are so interesting today.

For example, at some time she sent into Kellogg, the cereal folk, for a recipe card for things you could make out of the humble corn flake. I'm guessing she really sent away for the Fruit 'n Cereal certificate that the envelope mentions, but it also came with the recipe card. The postmark says 1962, so perhaps one of her kids got this. Still, pretty neat.

The recipes use corn flakes to coat chicken or make baked Alaska, macaroons or coffee cake. For example, you crunch up the flakes, add salt and pepper, then dip the chicken in evaporated milk (not regular milk, which is too thin) and and then the flake mixture, and bake.

There's a small sheet of Gold Strike Stamps. Remember those? I actually think these are from the 50s. They competed with S&H Green Stamps.

I found this Hostess Cake ad which is really a toy -- there's a small length of chain attached to two places on this card where the drawing of the man's face should be. You jiggle the card and suddenly theman's nose is long, or short, or droopy, or part of his chin, or whatever.

Fun!

I love this map of Ogden, which is copyright 1937. It lists Lake Street going through the middle of what is now the Ogden City Municipal Building. In 1937 the old city hall was north of Lake on that block and the library was south of it. Both were torn down to make way for the City-County building.

The map lists all the other businesses along those streets back there -- what a lot of them there were.

I love the ad for Intermountain Photo Service on 24th Street. Back then 5-hour service to get your prints done was pretty quick.  Unless you can find one of the few 1-hour labs still operating (Macy's has one) in the area, you have to send it out. I was at Walgreens yesterday and heard the clerk tell someone that it would take a week to get film developed and they wouldn't even send the negatives back.

This is progress?