Saturday's postcard: The white squirrels of Olney, Illinois

This Genuine Curteich linen postcard shows the famed white squirrels of Olney, Illinois.

The Olney colony, the "White Squirrel Capital of the World" is still going fairly strong today. Wikipedia notes that the white squirrels have the right of way on all streets in the city of 9,100 human inhabitants. 

The city of Olney's website, which offers a detailed history of how the white squirrels came to inhabit the area and thrive, notes that the 2023 squirrel count found 858 gray squirrels, 73 white squirrels and 85 cats. (That cat count was down from 106 in 2022, a decrease that the city termed "greatly welcomed.")

The city report also noted with concern that extinction of the white squirrels there is possible by 2034 if no efforts are made to help preserve the population. But another study estimates that extinction would not occur until 2059. Suggested strategies to help the white squirrels include relocating some of the gray squirrels and providing "generous" food and water for the white squirrels, especially in the winter. Residents are encouraged to plant fruit and nut trees.

Other prominent white squirrel communities are located in Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and New York. A few college campus also have their own white squirrel populations, which are fiercely protected by the human community.

Postcards of Olney's white squirrels from over the decades are fairly abundant on eBay. In a search, I even came across an image of a nifty QSL card (for the McWilliams family) touting Olney's white squirrel community.

A postcard of Earle W. Cook's house, for some reason

OK, here's a bit of a head-scratching mystery.

Why did Dexter Press produce this postcard of the house of Mr. and Mrs. Earle W. Cook, on its triangular plot of land in Kingman, Arizona?

According to Diane Allmen's Dating Dexter Press Postcards webpage, this card (55990-B) was produced in 1962. Other than the Cooks' names and "Kingman, Arizona," the only things listed on the back are the address — 215 Caminodelascolinas, which should be more properly stated as 215 Camino de las Colinas — and the publisher, Fritz Studio of Kingman.

Based on the address, I'm not sure this house still exists.

Earle Wayne Cook Sr. (1902-1966) died just a few years after this postcard was published, of a heart attack on the Fourth of July 1966. The main item of note I can find about him is that he was a Democratic Arizona state senator representing Mohave County. His businesses included bottling, ranching and mining.

And here's a plot twist the postcard publishers certainly couldn't anticipate: In 1967, Cook's son, Earle Theodore Cook Jr., attempted to murder his wife, Jeanne, by blowing up the airplane she was traveling on.

You read that correctly.

It's 2024, and these miscellaneous old postcards can still take you down some serious rabbit holes, folks.

The first article I came across was in the November 19, 1967, edition of The Arizona Republic. The headline states "Bomb Suspect Son of Mohave Senator." The subhead reads "Earle T. Cook Recalled in Kingman as Bright Young Man."

The first paragraph states: "Earle T. Cook, 37, held in Chicago under $100,000 bond for an alleged attempt to bomb a jetliner, was a native of Kingman and the son of a veteran Mohave County senator who died last year."

The federal trial was incredibly swift. Just a few months later, on February 6, 1968, Earle Jr. was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The details are summarized in a modern-day Chicago Tribune article by Colleen Connolly. Earle Jr. had apparently been trying for a while to kill his wife of 15 years and the mother of his two sons. He contacted a hit man and considering drowning and shooting as other murder methods.

Finally, Earle Jr. took things into his own hands and built a bomb at home.

I'll let the Tribune take it from here:

"What happened next is unthinkable in today’s world of air travel. Cook took his wife to O’Hare and checked her bags while she waited in a lounge, according to a Tribune report. An FBI agent said Cook then removed the contents of one of the bags, placed the homemade bomb inside and handed the bags to an airport porter who checked them. There was no search of the bags whatsoever. Ironically, the same porter who took the luggage without checking it handled it roughly, causing parts of the bomb to dislodge and malfunction, the FBI surmised.

"When the bomb went off in the luggage compartment, it made a loud noise that caught the attention of the pilot and passengers, but nobody realized it was a bomb. The pilot thought the plane struck a downdraft, so he kept flying. It was only when they arrived at their destination in San Diego that the crew found the bomb parts and wreckage in the luggage hold."

Earle Jr. was busted. His likely affairs with other women, conversations with the hit man and multiple insurance policies on his wife didn't help matters during the trial.

According to the Tribune, before being sent off to prison, Earle Jr. said: “I feel that I have been given a trial under a system I believe in. I believe in our form of government. The only thing I am sorry about is that I am innocent. The evidence presented didn’t quite portray my innocence.”

Earle Jr. remarried in 1977 and died in 1981 at age 50. I couldn't find an obituary. All I have is this unused postcard of his parents' house in the Arizona desert.