Star Wars notepads from the 1970s with Chewbacca and Darth Vader

The Force is strong with these nifty vintage notepads: Wookiee Doodle Pad and Official Duty Roster (as if Darth Vader was the one who was assigned to put that duty roster together each week; if so, that task was probably something he hated even more than sand.)

The pads measure about 4¼ inches by 7¼ inches. On the back, the company creating these is listed as Drawing Board Greeting Cards of Dallas, Texas. (American Greetings acquired Drawing Board Greeting Cards in 1985 and came up with the idea of using Drawing Board to publish risqué cards, according to a 1986 article on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel website.)

"Official Duty Roster" is still in its plastic wrapping, and there's a sticker on the front with the Star Wars logo indicating that these "Perky Pads" contain 100 sheets and cost $1.75. The fine print also makes it clear that the trademarks are owned Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and used with authorization. (Of course, the profits went straight into the pocket of George Lucas, who famously secured all of the licensing and merchandising rights for Star Wars prior to its initial release.)

There's not much that I could find online about these pads, which I guess makes sense. They're not as exciting as Star Wars figures or other collectibles. 

According to StarWars.com, though, the pads were popular and were "even used by screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan for notes on a draft of the Return of the Jedi script from 1981."

A few other Star Wars-related posts

• 1979 Star Wars toy ads
• The inspiration provided by Carrie Frances Fisher
• 1970s summer comics nostalgia with Thing and Vision, Episode X
• Watch "Star Wars" in the comfort of your own living room

When in doubt ... chocolate

In these troubled times, there's no shame in turning to chocolate.

(And no, scientists don't believe we're going to run out of chocolate by 2050 because of climate change, but climate change is still a real and dire threat requiring immediate action.)

This is the cover of a nifty notepad featuring Hershey's cocoa recipes. The bottom portion of each otherwise blank page inside contains a tasty recipe with Hershey's cocoa as part of the mix. There are about a half-dozen different recipes.

There's no date of publication for this notepad, but, in examining the interior illustrations and also deploying my Spidey sense for ephemera, I'd guess it dates to the 1960s. Interestingly, the cover image evokes a kind of 1920s/1930s nostalgia that would certainly have appealed to folks living through the upheavals of the 1960s and recalling their childhoods. (Upon closer examination, though, the guy in the middle has a bit of an Eddie Munster thing going on with his hair.)

I'm not going to retype any of the recipes. Instead, I'll just share the images of some interior pages, which should be sufficient — you can always click on Papergreat images to magnify them — if you want to grab some cocoa from the pantry and make a treat.

Related posts

• Klein Chocolate Co. of Elizabethtown analyzes Fannie's butter fat
• Vintage wrapper for a Milk-Nickel
• Chill out on a hot day with these 1950s dessert recipes
• Some tasty-sounding dessert recipes from Arm & Hammer, circa 1935
• Two selections from 1942 Borden booklet of "magic recipes"
• Found recipes: Three layer choco-mocha pie

Mystery notepad: Atomic Electronic Co. of Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Here's a mini mystery from southcentral Pennsylvania. Or, more likely, a small business that popped up and then dropped off the radar without much ado a half-century ago.

But it left something behind.

A notepad.

Atomic Electronic Co.

The notepad sheets measure 3 inches by 5 inches. They indicate that the business was located at 216 Nevin Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The phone number was EXpress 40-765.

There are two short phrases: "Electronically Yours" and "Near You — Yet Traffic Free." That second one seems like an odd thing to state on your notepad paper.

The 200 block of Nevin Street in Lancaster is a mostly residential area. It's just south of Franklin & Marshall College and within walking distance of The Chameleon Club, where Live played early in its career. Nevin Street is also within walking distance of my workplace, LNP. I should go check it out in person on a nice spring day. But, for now, Google Maps will have to do.

So, what about Atomic Electronic Co.?

There's not much I could discover.

I found that it was incorporated in December 1959. An April 1967 advertisement in The Gazette and Daily of York, Pennsylvania, states that Atomic Electronic was selling tickets for the Spring-Time Special steam locomotive excursion on the Western Maryland Railway between York and Hagerstown, Maryland. In that advertisement, it's referred to as Atomic Electronics Co., with an S on Electronics. So we already have a variation. Does the notepad have a typo? Or does the newspaper ad have a typo?

The last tidbit I found isn't really helpful at all, but it's pretty fun. It's this classified advertisement from the October 31, 1981 (Halloween) edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The address is wrong, of course. Number 217 would presumably be right across the street from the Atomic Electronic Co. But that must have been quite the interesting neighborhood over the years.

Presidential ephemera that I wish wasn't necessary, on multiple levels

More about this from Time magazine. I wonder if this piece of notepad paper will make it to the presidential archives or library.

This week's coolest ephemera on eBay, courtesy of Vincent Price

At some point in his life, the amazing Vincent Price (1911-1993) doodled and jotted names and ideas all over a piece of Sheraton Hotels & Motor Inns notepaper. Now, in 2018, that piece of paper is a hot commodity on eBay. What a world.

It is a truly cool piece of paper, though.

In addition to four faces that show Price's flair for drawing, the jotted names seem to be a who's who of Old Hollywood: Tallulah (Bankhead?), Clifton (Webb?), Noel (Coward?), Mrs. John Huston (he had five wives, a later possibility among them is Enrica Soma), Lorre...

And, as if an idea struck him, this is scrawled twice: Instant obits.

What did it mean, Vincent?

Among the other things jotted down: Snowbird Lodge, Picasso, Stahl, St. Georges Hospital, phone numbers and ... best of all ... Tooting. That's a word that always makes Sarah laugh, so she'll be especially pleased that Vincent Price once scribbled it on a notepad.

Related posts

• Vincent Price is the Nexus of All Things
• Happy 100th birthday, Vincent Price
• Great links: Vincent Price's travels and St. Elsewhere history
• Unschool Rules: Celebrating the legend of Vincent Price

A long-gone motor inn, longer-gone ancestors and a sketch

Here's a fun piece of ephemera we came across while cleaning out 505 Oak Crest Lane. It's a piece of letterhead from the now-vanished Framingham Motor Inn in Framingham, Massachusetts.¹

My grandmother used it, years ago, to write down notes from her voluminous genealogy research.² It's filled with 18th century dates and names such as Hendrickson, Walraven and others that I cannot read because her handwriting was not stellar. There's a Sven (Swain) Walraven who married Cathrine (?) Hendrickson, and they had five children, one of whom died shortly after birth and another who didn't make it to his 11th birthday.³

Meanwhile, the reverse side of this paper features a partial sketch that was probably drawn by my mom...

As for the Framingham Motor Inn along Route 9 — "America's Finest Motor Inn" — I don't think it exists any more. I did find some interesting tidbits, though, while researching its fate:

• A Framingham Motor Inn menu from December 1954 featured fried filet of sole for $1.35, chopped sirloin steak for $1.50, baked stuffed schrod in Lobster Newburg sauce for $1.50 and half lobster thermidor for $1.85. The dessert menu offerings included ice cream puff, apple pan dowdy and baked Indian pudding.
• The inn had its own china at one point.
• A commenter on the VisitingNewEngland.com post titled "Great Memories Of New England Restaurants That Are No Longer with Us" writes: "Framingham’s most romantic spot might have been La Rotisserie Normandie, at the Framingham Motor Inn, where you could get flaming food!"
• A New England School Development Council Conference on "How to Save Money by Really Trying" was held at the Framingham Motor Inn in October 1970.
• Donald R. "Bob" Nelson, who died in 2008 at age 80, was "An accomplished trumpet player and vocalist [who] was the leader of the 'Bob Nelson Orchestra'." The orchestra was once a featured group at the former Framingham Motor Inn.
• A 2011 commenter on the This is Framingham blog writes that there was once a place called "Vibrations in the old Framingham Motor Inn in front of the Waterview apartments."
• The 2006 memoir 40 Hour Man, by author Stephen Beaupre and artist Steve Lafler, contains the following passage:
  

  "I was about to graduate from high school and had made plans with friends to rent a house at the beach that summer. I needed a short-term job to hold me over. That job turned out to be working at the Framingham Motor Inn, a faded no-frills motel overseen by a shadowy figure in a white linen suit who had a hook for a hand.
  
  "I was hired to wash dishes, but was liberated from kitchen duty by the maintenance supervisor, an easygoing character named Tony. All the maintenance guys loved working for Tony, and it was easy to see why. There wasn't much work involved. Each morning, he would round us up, hand out paintbrushes, and then vanish for the day. We responded to this honor policy like any other self-respecting group of punks: We went up on the roof and smoked dope.
  
  "The big project that summer was painting the motel pool, and Olympic-sized monstrosity that hadn't been touch in decades. I'd like to say we rose to the challenge, but that's not quite right. Mostly we sat around in the deep end, paint scraper in one hand, beer in the other, keeping one eye out for Captain Hook."
  

Footnotes
1. Framingham, birthplace of Crispus Attucks, is situated along the Native American trail that became known as the Old Connecticut Path. In a related note, speaking of New England's oldest pathways, Joan recently sent me a link to a fascinating BLDG BLOG post titled "Lost Highways." Geoff Manaugh's piece discusses the "ancient" roads, some never built, in Vermont and the legal issues they have created in modern times. It serves as a companion post to Manaugh's article in The New Yorker titled "Where the Roads Have No Name." It's great stuff, partly discussing whether old roads have just as much of a right to be preserved (or at least marked and remembered) as certain historic buildings.
2. We also came across a 1978 notebook with a Battlestar Galactica themed cover that's filled with genealogy notes. That made me chuckle.
3. During this time, roughly, the Seven Years' War and its North American component, the French and Indian War were taking place.

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.

Pocket notepad to keep track of duck and turkey eggs in 1925

This red pocket notepad – which is just 2½ inches wide – was distributed as a complimentary product by the Lancaster Chemical Company.

The company, which was based in both Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Perryville, Maryland, manufactured "High-Grade Animal Bone Fertilizers." There were special formulas for tobacco and vegetables, potatoes, wheat and other crops.

The blank pages inside the book were used long ago by a farmer who wanted to keep daily track of his or her Pekin duck eggs. The first page, shown below, indicates that anywhere from 1 to 5 duck eggs were produced each day between February 25 and March 31 in 1925.

The next two pages detail the daily totals in April (which ranged from 2 to 5) and May (in which there wasn't a day with more than one egg until the 13th).

After that, there were only a few scattered reports from days in June and early July. Overall, the best month seemed to be April, when there were nine days with five eggs and fifteen days with four eggs.

The middle pages of the notepad are blank. Toward the back, there are some other interesting pages. One has the following:

Duck eggs set
April 10th 42
April 28th 56
May 29th 30
June 9th 5
July 8th 11
Another focuses on the economic side of the equation:

Duck Eggs Sold
March 14th 1 dozen @ .35 .35
March 21st 1½ dozen @ .35 .53
March 28th 2½ dozen @ .35 .88
April 13th 2 dozen @ .35 .70
May 18th 1 dozen @ .35 .35
Finally, there is a page focusing on an different type of egg:

Turkey Eggs Set
April 28th 31
May 7th found turkey with 11 eggs
May 12th set turkey on 12 eggs
May 29th 18
May 30th found turkey with 11 eggs
August 8th found turkey with 12 eggs
We don't seem to put much focus on the turkey egg industry in the United States today. Mostly because, although they're very healthy, they're too expensive and not economical to mass-produce. To read more about turkey eggs, check out "Why don't Americans eat turkey eggs?" on Slate and the "Eating turkey eggs?" thread on the BackYardChickens.com message board.

In the meantime, I'll close with a photo of some Pekin ducks. They are way too cute to eat but, sadly, about 95 percent of the duck meat eaten in the United States is Pekin duck (even though they make wonderful pets).

Found recipes: zucchini, corn and tomatoes & brownie mounds

Late last year, my wife and I were checking out The Biggest “Little” Flea Market in Hallam, Pennsylvania, when I came across a great find for Papergreat: A plastic box that was absolutely packed with recipes -- some handwritten, some clipped, and all well-loved and often-used. This had been someone's lifelong collection and now it was for sale on a table in flea market. For a buck.

It's filled with all kinds of treasures, and I'll share a couple here today. First up is a recipe for a vegetable dish of zucchini, corn and tomatoes. As a bonus, it's written out on an old sheet of notepaper from The York Dispatch.¹ The Dispatch is afternoon competitor of the news organization I currently work for in this two-newspaper town. But I worked for the Dispatch, too, many moons ago.² So I think it's pretty cool to stumble across this old piece of its history (notice the phone number).

Here's the recipe from that notepad sheet:

Zucchini, Corn & Tomatoes
2 lbs. zucchini - sliced
¼ cup butter
½ cup sliced onions
1¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon oregano
3 med. tomatoes, sliced thin
1 can whole kernel corn

In hot butter sauté onion - add zucchini, salt, pepper and oregano. Cover & simmer about 15 min. Add tomatoes - cook uncovered 5 min. longer. Add corn and heat through. Serves 6-8.

And here's a recipe for a dessert, which is rated as "Good!" on the index card it was written on:

Brownie Mounds
Sift 3⅓ cups sifted flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder & ½ teaspoon salt. Mix ⅔ cups margarine and 1½ cups sugar. Stir in ⅔ cup Karo light corn syrup and 2 eggs. Stir in the flour 6 (1 oz.) squares melted unsweetened chocolate, 2 teaspoons vanilla and 1½ cups chopped nuts. Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350° 10 to 12 min.

If you try the Brownie Mounds recipe, feel free to send some my way!

And if there are any ephemeral recipes you're looking for, as we head into the summer months (sandwiches, desserts, barbecue, things in Jell-O) please let me know and I'll dive into this little yellow box and try to find something for you. We can keep circulating the collected recipes of this unknown York County resident.

Read Part 2 of this post

Footnotes
1. Notepaper! That means this post qualifies to be included in the much-neglected From the Notepad category, which hasn't had a new post since August 2011.
2. I was a copy editor at the Dispatch from 1995 to 1997. I've been at the York Daily Record/Sunday News since 2000. In between, I was Down South.

From the Notepad #3: A trio of pocket pads

The very occasional From the Notepad series returns today with three small notepads that were once given away by farm-supply and hardware businesses. They are slim and small -- about 2⅝ inches wide and 5½ inches deep, which is perfect for a shirt pocket or back pocket. One of the pads contains lined pages. The other two pads have graph paper.

1. Longman and Martinez Pure Paints

This undated notepad has the following advertising pitch on the inside front cover:

"IF YOU NEED TEN
gallons of any other paint to cover your house, purchase SIX GALLONS OF THE L. & M. PAINT, MIX IT WITH FOUR GALLONS OF PURE LINSEED OIL, and the work will be done better than with pure white lead.¹ ADD COST OF L. & M. PAINT AND OIL, and see how cheaply you have bought ten gallons of finest paint obtainable.

LINSEED OIL IS THE LIFE OF PURE PAINT."

The pitch continues on the inside back cover:

"BUY LINSEED OIL
from oil barrel, and not in a sealed can with a paint label thereon.

When you buy a thin liquid paint, three-quarters of it, if best quality, is linseed oil for which you pay from $1.50 to $1.75 a gallon.²

YOU DON'T DO THAT WITH L. & M. PURE PAINT.

It's semi-paste, and you add from ¾ to 1 gallon of linseed oil to every gallon of the paint.

YOU PAY PROPER PRICE FOR PAINT AND OIL.

Always use the Longman & Martinez PURE PAINTS."

The back cover of the notepad includes an image (pictured below) of the Longman and Martinez paint can and is specially stamped to indicate that the line of paint products is for sale by Herman Olney of Waverly, New York.

2. Barreled Sunlight from U.S. Gutta Percha Paint Co.

Here's another undated notepad that makes a pitch for paint. This notepad, from the U.S. Gutta Percha Paint Co.³ in Providence, Rhode Island, has this advertising copy on the inside front cover of the notepad:

"Some room in your place of business or at home needs Barreled Sunlight.

Sanitary
Washable
Permanent
Reflects Light
Resists Dirt
Remains White Longest

BARRELED SUNLIGHT is an oil paint made by the 'Rice Process'⁴ which combines holding of the whiteness, intense opacity and ease of spreading. Write for descriptive literature and sample board showing the BARRELED SUNLIGHT Lustre."

Unlike Longman and Martinez Pure Paints, the U.S. Gutta Percha Paint Co. wants nothing to do with linseed oil in its Barreled Sunlight. The inside back cover of the notepad states:

"Barreled Sunlight-Gloss is for finishing coat for use over previously painted or primed surfaces. Each can should be thoroughly stirred from bottom and used as received. If paint has thickened somewhat add trifle of Turpentine to make it spread freely. Caution -- Use no Linseed Oil for thinning finishing coat."

3. Reading Bone Fertilizers

This notepad for the Reading Bone Fertilizer Company in Reading, Pennsylvania, contains a calendar for the second half of 1936 and all of 1937 on the inside back cover.

Listed on the inside front cover are the company's various brands of bone fertilizers, along with their N-P-K ratios.

The back cover, meanwhile, contains this pitch for Reading Meat Meal:

"Poultry men who are using our Meat Meal declare that it is the best meal for feeding in a dry mash they have ever seen. We manufacture by a new process. The meal is of good sweet odor, is made of fresh stock and is an abundant egg producer. Ask our agent or write us for sample and price, stating what quantity you desire."

Of the three notepads, this is only one that has been written in. On the bottom of the front cover, you can see that someone wrote lightly -- or wrote and then erased -- the words "Rabbit Book." And these words have been written on the last page of the pad:

Footnotes
1. To be clear, Papergreat does not recommend the use of lead paint.
2. These days, a typical gallon of linseed oil would cost somewhere between $21 to $35.
3. Here's an excerpt on the history of U.S. Gutta Percha Paint Company and its building at 8-12 Dudley Street from an appendix of Providence industrial sites prepared in 1981 by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission:

"This large, 4-story, brick, pier-and-panel, industrial building with its long, rhythmical facade and widely bracketed cornice, designed by Perry Whipple, is the second site of the United States Gutta Percha Paint Company founded by J. William Rice in 1886 and originally located at Mathewson and West Exchange Streets. Not long after the building was completed a 3-story brick annex for the boiler room was designed by Fontaine and Kennicut. Rice had been active as a paint, chemical, and dye-stuff dealer since 1861. He invented a paint-making process which used Malayan gum-tree resins known as gutta percha. The paint which resulted was an early white latex called 'Barreled Sunlight' that was, according to the company's advertisements, unique in its non-yellowing properties. The U.S. Gutta Percha Paint Company also produced oil-based paints, enamels, and a popular white lead paint called 'Rice's Crown German White Lead.' By 1930 the company had a network of 170 distributors and 7,500 retail dealers as well as a significant export business.

The plant was vacated before 1962 and is now occupied by the CNC Chemical Company which specializes in the manufacture of chemicals for textile- and paper-finishing companies."

4. My guess is that the "Rice Process" is named after company founder J. William Rice and has nothing to do with rice.

From the Notepad #2: Kaul Lumber Company

For today's "From the Notepad," the vintage piece of notepad paper is from Kaul Lumber Co. in Birmingham, Alabama. The Kaul nameplate is bookended by the dates 1887 and 1936, which must have been its years of incorporation at that point.

Also printed on the sheet: "Wholesalers to the trade in lumber products of all kinds and species!" and "J.B. Hutter, Phone 1434 -- 11 Harrison Street, Lynchburg, Virginia."

So, Hutter was Kaul's sales representative in Lynchburg and this is a sheet from his personalized notepad. Hutter must not have been with Kaul Lumber for long after this sheet was printed, however, because a 1937 issue of American Lumberman states: "JB Hutter of Lynchburg, Va., has become sales representative of Mixer & Co., Buffalo, in Virginia. Mr. Hutter has been with the Kaul Lumber Co., Birmingham, Ala., for several years."

Kaul Lumber Co. has an interesting history that includes a strong Pennsylvania connection and a very minor York connection. Here goes:

• John Kaul Sr. was born in Ebersberg, Bavaria, on June 18, 1814.¹ He left Bavaria in 1844 and eventually joined other colonists from his native country in St. Marys, Pennsylvania. He built a log house there and married Kunegunda Brindle in September 1844.²
• One the many children of John and Kunegunda was Andrew Kaul, who was born July 15, 1845, in St. Marys. After finishing his schooling, Andrew became involved in the lumber trade:
  

  During the following year [1863] he worked for Joseph Lanzel and Peter Kleixner, who were getting out square timber on the Sinnemahoning. In 1864 he and Mr. Lanzel took a contract to supply square timber to Col. Noyes and Simon Cameron, which contract they completed successfully, by delivering their rafts at Marietta, Penn. This partnership was continued, following up the first by a second contract, to cut and peel pine logs for Mr. Bryan of Philadelphia. This necessitated the employment of a number of men, and proved very successful. In 1865 their operations were transferred to West Creek, where they were the pioneers of the woods. Their contract was with Herdick, Lentz & White of Williamsport.³

  Andrew Kaul married Walburga Lanzel in 1865 and their first child was John Lanzel Kaul, who was born in October 1866 and went on to serve as president of Kaul Lumber Co. Andrew, meanwhile, returned to St. Marys in 1868 and purchased some pine lands east of there, including some acreage from Sebastian Weis of York, Pa.

• And so John Lanzel Kaul (pictured at right), the grandson of John Kaul Sr. of Bavaria, followed his father, Andrew Kaul, into the lumber trade. In Alabama, he eventually took the idea of a completely contained industry to its fullest conclusion by establishing Kaulton, a company town.⁴
  
  The Birmingham Public Library's department of archives and manuscripts has the following description of how Kaul built his lumber empire in Alabama:
  

  John Kaul learned the lumber business by working in his father’s companies in his native Pennsylvania, and in 1889 he toured the South searching for investments. He bought part interest, and later full interest, in the Sample Lumber Company at Hollins, Alabama. In 1902, he changed the company’s name to the Kaul Lumber Company and incorporated the Kaul Land and Lumber Company, which would buy and hold land. The mill at Hollins was shut down in 1911. In 1912, near the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the company built its new mill and company town. The town of Kaulton, with its wide lots, churches, clubs, and well designed houses, was a model of what owner John Kaul called the “new welfare emphasis in the southern lumber industry.”

  None of it lasted very long, though. John Lanzel Kaul died in 1931.⁵ The company was taken over by a group of trustees, including John's son, Hugh Kaul.⁶ Also that year, Kaulton's mill closed down. (Kaul Lumber Co., however, continued to operate until the mid-1960s.)
  
  Few paper records remain of Kaulton, the mill and its employees, according to the Birmingham Public Library. There are, however, a Kaulton Road, Kaulton Park⁷ and Kaulton Field near the southern edge of Tuscaloosa, not far from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
  
  Some interesting images of Kaulton and the mill can be seen on the The Encyclopedia of Alabama website (specifically, images 1, 2, 3, 10, 12 and 13 in the gallery).

Footnotes
1. Source: "History of the counties of McKean, Elk, and Forest, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections," published in 1890 by J.H. Beers & Co. This text states that John Kaul Sr. was born in "Elbersberg." But, as there is not a town with that name in Bavaria, to the best of my knowledge, I am assuming that Ebersberg is correct.
2. Brindle had also traveled from Ebersberg to St. Marys in 1844, with a party of three families. According to the aforementioned 1890 volume: "It was understood, however, that on her arrival here, she should become the wife of John Kaul, Sr., in accordance with the betrothal in their native land, and, as related above, she was married to him in the fall of the year they arrived."
3. The source, again, is "History of the counties of McKean, Elk, and Forest, Pennsylvania, with biographical selections."
4. Also of note on Wikipedia: List of company towns, list of company towns in Alabama and the entry on welfare capitalism/industrial paternalism.
5. For more on the early life of John Lanzel Kaul, I recommend "American lumbermen:
the personal history and public and business achievements of one hundred eminent lumbermen of the United States," which was published in 1906 and is available as a Google eBook. The chapter on Kaul discusses his education at Rock Hill College in Baltimore, his early business experience, his start with Sample Lumber Company, his involvement with First National Bank of Birmingham, his marriage to Virginia Roy Head (the daughter of a judge), and his membership in the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo (a fraternal organization of lumbermen featuring silly names, some of which are derived from Lewis Carroll works).
6. Hugh Kaul went on to become a founder, director and president of the Alabama Forestry Association, according to NetState.com. He also served four terms in the Alabama legislature and had a major hand in the Southern Longleaf Pine (aka Pinus palustris) being named Alabama's state tree.
7. Here are some pictures from an April 2009 community clean-up of Kaulton Park.

From the Notepad: Cool links, Lada Draskovic, Twitter and more

Today's a great day to launch an occasional feature called "From the Notepad", which will include comments from readers, updates on previous entries, random things that have been rolling around in my head¹, and a piece of notepad ephemera.

Today's notepad sheet (pictured at right) doubles as a minor mystery. It's from Dietz's Lawn and Garden Store, located one mile north of Stony Brook at R.D. 7 in York, Pennsylvania. At the bottom of the sheet is this "Pappy says" tip: "Garden Tractors, Hand and Power Mowers bought from us are backed by service to give customers satisfaction. Consult us about your lawn and garden problems."

I haven't been able to find anything relating to the existence or history of Dietz's, so I might need to turn to my wonderful wife and her "Ask Joan" column. And, of course, if you have any thoughts or insights on this slip of paper, include them in the comments section.

COOL BLOG OF THE DAY: A reader left the following comment on the "Delving into Henry K. Wampole & Company" entry:

Thanks for the info! I write a blog using my great-grandfather's diary from 1927 and he mentioned buying a bottle of Wampole's. I had no idea what it was and so set off on a search and found your blog! Will add a link for my readers to find out more. My blog is at bacling.blogspot.com

Bacling, who describes himself as a "husband, father, pastor, fire and life safety educator" has indeed put together a fascinating blog, using a relative's old journals as a hook to write about the past and present.

Here's an excerpt from the journal entry that discusses Wampole's:

On Thursday, March 31, 1927 Bonnie Elmore wrote: Rain-Cold. Pay Day. Arose at 6:00. Made a fire. Dumped ashes. Left home at 7:45. My eyes hurt very badly. Walked down street at noon. Norman took meat to Scout leaders at 6:30 p.m. to demonstrate campfire cooking. I got haircut also bottle of Wampoles. Shaved after supper. Chilly. We went to bed about 11:00.

If you like that excerpt, you'll definitely want to check out more at Bacling's blog.

MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY: If you've been working hard and perhaps employing a therapist to help block out the images presented in last week's entry on "He-She Jewelry", you might want to move on to the next item.

I mentioned the "cosmic, karmic connection going on here across two continents", with regard to bloggers in England and the United States writing about the same silly piece of ephemera and using the exact same two images.

In response, Chris P. Bohn, the British author of the original "He-She Jewelry" post, has dubbed me his "new favourite writer in the whole wide world" on his current blog, dotsey.com.² Bohn also describes me as having "exquisite taste," which might cause my wife to gag on her Diet Pepsi.

Anyway, I will continue our intercontinental lovefest by reminding everyone that Bohn's book, "A Modicum of Daftitude" is still available and now sports the ridiculously low price of $7.55. Buy copies today for all your nephews and neighbors!

LADA DRASKOVIC UPDATE: Toward the end of the March 24 entry on "Doll fads of 1960", I mentioned the "sweetniks" dolls created by Yugoslavia's Lada Draskovic (pictured at right), and challenged readers to help find more information about her. There haven't been any volunteers yet, so here's what I have discovered.

In 2003, Edgar Chavasse, who served in the British military in World War II, posted a note on Rodoslovlje, the website of the Serbian Genealogical Society, seeking information on the three children of the Draskovic family. Chavasse wrote: "The eldest Dejan (?) went to University in Italy to study Law. The daughter Lada was also in Italy and the youngest Stojan was killed in 1944/5 and is buried in a small cemetery by the water near Kotor. Their father did not survive the war and their mother was in Dubrovnik in 1947/8. I knew Dejan and Lada in Florence 1944-1946 but then lost touch. If they are alive they will be nearly 80 by now but I would be very grateful for any information."

Chavasse had some success with his research and checked back to the same forum with this update in 2005. (Note: I have cleaned up some typos and punctuation in the following excerpt.)

Let me set out what I know. The family Draskovic was resident in Kotor Bokarska until World War II. I believe that the father may have been executed by Tito's Communist forces in 1944 and that this was reported in the local press. The mother moved to Dubrovnik where she was living in mid 1947 when I visited her there whilst still in the Army and attached to The British Embassy in Belgrade. I also visited and photographed Stojan's grave and was told he had been killed in action against the Germans in 1944. As to Dejan I think he was possibly at Bologna University rather than, say Padova. He was with a group of Italian Partizans north of Assisi and, after the liberation, fell gravely ill in Gubbio during October 1944. I took his sister [Note from Chris: That would be Lada] over to get him from there and brought him back to Florence, where he recovered. That was a hair-raising journey by jeep with no windscreen in bad weather. At the time I was part of a small unit waiting to go into Bologna, but we never achieved it. Lada was working as a receptionist at The Excelsior Hotel in Florence from after the liberation in 1944 until late 1947, when she may have married an Italian businessman in the hardware business. At that time the Excelsior was an Officers Rest Hotel run by the US Army. Unfortunately all their staff records were lost in the postwar flood disaster. The then-manager, "Boris", was transferred to the Danieli in Venice, but has died so there are no leads there.

Later in 2005, Chavasse mentions in a post that he has "succeeded in tracing Lada Draskovic", but doesn't specify what that means or give any further information.

The best hope at this point might be tracking down Chavasse and seeing if he has anything further that he can divulge on what became of Draskovic and her sweetniks of 1960.

TWEETS AND TWITTER: Did you know that you can follow @Papergreat on Twitter? Among other things, you'll get a tweet every time a new post goes up. And I might have an ephemera giveaway through that account sometime down the road, too, so it's a great time to get on board.

I'm a bit of a Twitter addict myself. I follow an eclectic group that includes Phillies beat writers, national news organizations, booksellers, friends, Penn State football sources, meteorologists, authors and a couple of celebrities³.

One thing that has surprised me about Twitter is how its 140-character limit hasn't stopped people from finding ways to deliver eloquent commentaries and rants.

Author Joe Hill (@joe_hill), who is the son of Stephen King, has a fantastic presence on Twitter. He delivered this commentary yesterday, spread over four consecutive tweets:

Comic stores are increasingly becoming pop culture stores & this is a good thing. All of it - comics, vinyl, anime, action figures, games, Bettie Page, old forgotten wonderful TV shows - go together. They represent the totality of something I think matters: the American imagination. Comic stores are imagination shops. In an increasingly digital world, your neighborhood #comicsmarket gives you the chance to own lasting daydreams, not disposable "content."

I couldn't agree more, by the way.

Footnotes
1. It's a scary place up there. I advise you to take a flashlight and a baseball bat.
2. I am considering reworking the banner graphic on Papergreat to include that quote.
3. Oddly, most of the celebrities I follow have a Star Trek connection. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy -- both 80! -- and Wil Wheaton all have great Twitter personalities.