MemoriesandMiscellany

In 1976 the Chinese Government invited a group of Congressional staff members to visit. I was chosen to be part of the delegation. The prospect was exciting -- exactly how exciting I had no idea.

On our second night in Beijing staying on the 8th floor of the Peace Hotel, shown left, July 28, our group of about ten, with escorts, were treated to dinner at one of the city’s famed restaurants in which every course employs some part of the duck. Ours, as I recall, was called the “Sick Duck Restaurant,” because it was located near the main hospital. Appropriately, I was sick that night with terminal indigestion, having eaten much too much fatty duck, and was staggering from the bathroom back to bed when the most deadly earthquake of modern times and one of the three most deadly in recorded history, struck at 3:42 a.m.

Above is a chart of the severity of the shake on the Richter Scale – at the epicenter 8.2., in Beijing, a 6. It would become known as the Tanshang Earthquake for the major Chinese city it destroyed, killing up to half a million people – the devastation shown below. Although we were 140 kilometers from the epicenter the earthquake made an indelible impression.

It began with a series of blinding flashes in the sky; white, yellow and orange balls of light exploded everywhere. My first thought was that the Russians had attacked China with nuclear weapons. My second was: “Those bastards--why did they have to wait until I got here.” My next thought was: “How the hell do I get home?” My fourth: “No way.”

As soon as the lights stopped, the room began shaking and a deafening noise like a dozen out-of-control locomotives filled the air. My roommate, Dick Moose, shouted, “It’s an earthquake. Get under the bed.” I made an attempt but the bed was only five inches off the floor and my hind end would not fit under no matter how frantically I struggled. I lay flat on my ailing stomach, with only my legs protected, and said a simple prayer: “Lord, stop the earthquake or we’re all dead.”

According to the Marine guard at the U.S. Embassy, the shaking lasted for 45 seconds -- it seemed more like an eternity. When it stopped, Dick -- who kept his wits about him-- yelled, “We have got to get everyone out of here.” Luckily we both had flashlights, bought in Japan after Dick remarked something about the lights always going out in Asia. We dressed quickly, pulling on pants and shoes, and set out to round up others in our party.

We were on the 8th floor and except for our lights, it was pitch dark. I gathered a group of three or four and by flashlight we slowly made our way down the stairs. One woman had hold of my arm so tightly that the marks of her nails remained in my skin for several days. We assembled along with dozens of other hotel guests on the front lawn of the hotel. In the photo right I am on the right, still wearing my pajama tops. We never went back to our rooms. Our hosts, fearing we would be hurt in an aftershock, packed for us and brought us our clothes. Ambulance sirens wailed constantly. Everywhere Chinese by the hundreds were streaming into the streets.

As daylight appeared, it became clear that damage was light in Beijing despite the severity of the quake. During the day as we moved about the city the demeanor of the people was remarkable. Residents had been ordered out of their homes for fear of aftershocks. Everywhere families were busy along the sidewalks constructing lean-tos made from telephone poles and blue plastic tarpaulins. As the shelters were completed, mattresses and cooking pots were added. Mothers nursed babies, students read books, and dinner proceeded almost as if nothing unusual had happened. Despite the heavy rains that fell that day, Chinese stoicism seemed universal.

Our hosts informed us that our trips to the Forbidden City and the Great Wall had been canceled and that instead the next day we would be transported by train from Beijing to points south and west. We were given a choice of sleeping accommodations for the night: The soccer stadium, our automobiles, or mattresses on the floor of the ballroom of the defacto U.S. Embassy. (Full diplomatic relations had not yet been restored.) Without hesitation we chose the Embassy, shown here.

Even before the earthquake the U.S. Ambassador had planned a cocktail party for our group at the Embassy that evening, inviting high level Chinese officials who could speak English. Among them was Tan Wen-Sheng, the U.S. educated protégé of Madame Mao who became “Honey Huan,” a character in the Doonesbury comic strip. I was conversing with her when, some 15 hours after the initial quake, an aftershock registering 7.1 on the Richter scale jolted the room, sent table lamps flying, and pictures pitching perpendicular to the wall. Although well fortified by martinis by this time, I was aware that the ground I was standing on had turned to jelly. Abruptly, the party ended.

That night as we lay to sleep on bare mattresses, I could feel each aftershock through the ballroom floor. At about midnight came a sharper than usual shock. Instantly I was drenched in sweat.

The day after the earthquake a train was ready to take us to Honan Province south of Beijing. It was stocked with the two provisions we had ordered: plenty of beer and yellow-meat watermelon. Thus provisioned, we were hustled out of the capital city. Days of perspiration were to follow, not from anxiety, but from the extreme and unrelenting heat of July in East Central China. Referencing a popular food product our delegation adopted the name “Shake and Bake.”

Postscripts: The earthquake lights have been remarked on by many observers to the Tanshang disaster. They show up in only the most violent quakes and until the 1960s when actually photographed in Japan, as shown here, they were considered mythic by scientists. Various theories of their origin exist, but one that seems most plausible involves quartz-bearing rocks. Those rocks are known to generate an electrical charge when subjected to extreme mechanical stress. As shock waves rolled out from the epicenter, the rocks were squeezed, resulting in the bright flashes. Still, however, our Chinese hosts seemed to enjoy hearing my story about mistaking the earthquake for a Russian nuclear attack.

The history of the liquor industry in the United States traditionally has been dominated by men, particularly in the era before National Prohibition was imposed in 1920. Over time as I have profiled more than five hundred “pre-pro” distillers, whiskey wholesalers and saloonkeepers, I have found five women whose careers in whiskey were truly outstanding and deserve special recognition.

Mary Dowling from Anderson County, Kentucky, not only owned and ran major distillery, shown here, she found a way to stay in the liquor business after 1920 and, in effect, thumbed her nose at Prohibition. Kentucky-born to Irish immigrant parents, at seventeen she married a distiller at least 17 years her senior who saw her intelligence and brought her into the business. When he died, she inherited his interest in the Waterfill & Frazier distillery, bought out his partners, and ran it successful for two decades.

Her success, however, came to screeching halt with the imposition of National Prohibition. Federal records shown her withdrawing large quantities of whiskey from her bonded warehouse in the run up to the ban on alcohol. Some of this whiskey she is reported to have sold to those Kentucky distillers fortunate enough to be licensed to sell liquor for “medicinal purposes.” Other stocks, she successfully “bootlegged” for four years until Federal agents arrested her.

After authorities were unable to convict her, Mary Dowling hatched a new -- and more successful -- business plan. About 1926 she hired Joseph Beam, one of Kentucky’s premier distillers but now out of work, to dismantle the distillery, transport the pieces to Juarez, Mexico, reassemble it there, and resume making whiskey. Mexico had no prohibition so the liquor production was completely legal. Using several strategies to get her whiskey legally over the border to American consumers, she continued to operate until she died, four years short of Repeal.

Mary Jane Blair also was a Kentuckian who inherited her late husband’s share of a distillery, this one in Marion County, shown here. She promptly bought out his partners and changed the name to the “Mary Jane Blair Distillery.” Although the greater part of her life had been spent in the Blair home as housewife and mother, evidence is that she took an active role as president of the company, one that distilled about five months in the year. Limited production was not unusual in the Kentucky whiskey industry, some distillers believing that fermentation was done best only in certain months. As the distiller Mrs. Blair hired W. P. Norris, a well known Marion County whiskey man.

For the next seven years, with the help of a son, Mary Jane Blair operated the distillery, considerably expanding its capacity. By 1912 the plant had the mashing capacity of 118 bushels per day and four warehouses able to hold 9,000 barrels. The Blairs produced whiskey sold under several labels; the flagship was “Old Saxon,” as illustrated here by a back-of-the-bar bottle. About 1914 the family sold the facility. Mary Jane Blair died in 1922 at the age of 76.

Lovisa McCullough was a strong women’s rights advocate who successfully ran a liquor wholesale business in Pittsburgh following the death of her husband. A 1888 Pittsburgh directory under the heading “Liquors, Wholesale,” lists forty-nine such establishments in the city. All of them save one are readily identifiable as male-run companies. The exception is “McCullough, Louisa C., 523 Liberty Av.” That same year Lovisa became a delegate from Pittsburgh to the historic founding meeting of the International Council of Women (ICW) devoted to women’s suffrage. It is a safe bet that she was the only liquor dealer at the convention.

Obviously a woman of great energy, Lovisa McCullough threw herself into other causes. A lover of animals, she was a longtime member of the Humane Society and served on the board of the Pittsburgh chapter. She also was among women who worked toward buying up and preserving the grounds and structures at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where Gen. George Washington and his troops passed the winter. A true “Daughter of the American Revolution,” Lovisa’s grandfather may have been among those soldiers.

In 1893, after more than a half century of operation, the McCullough liquor dealership disappeared from Pittsburgh business directories. Its demise cannot be explained by National Prohibition that still was years away and Pennsylvania was “wet” until the end. Lovisa may have found her passion for feminist and other causes eclipsed her ardor for keeping alive the liquor enterprise. Or it may have been advancing age. Lovisa died in 1917, about 82 years old, and was buried beside her late husband, John, in Allegheny Cemetery.

Mary Moll, living in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, earned this tribute from a local newspaper: Mrs. Moll, when she took possession of the business, had many obstacles to overcome but, being a woman of wonderful business tact, she bravely fought the many unpleasant features connected with the business and successfully built up a trade far superior to any in this country.” Like the other women here, after her husband she died inherited his whiskey wholesale trade but also his three daughters from a prior marriage. They are shown at the family home, Mary at far right.

Rejecting advice by friends to sell the business, she set out not only to run the liquor dealership, but also to expand it. Her first instinct was to go on the road as a “drummer,” and give customers and potential customers her personal attention to make sales. The strategy worked and she was credited with ultimately tripling the business. After three years, however, Mary tired of traveling. Looking at the costs-benefits she concluded she could build her trade more effectively by staying home and keeping prices low.

Eventually, Mary Moll was selling three hundred barrels of whiskey a year. Although not a rectifier, that is a dealer mixing and blending her own brands, she was decanting the barrels into her own embossed glass containers, shown here. Those barrels would have resulted in her selling 53,400 quarts of whiskey, an impressive number for any liquor house. Mary Moll died in 1910 while still running her business. She was 64.

Catherine Klausman, when her husband died, was left with five minor children, a saloon, liquor store, and small hotel, together known as “The German House,” shown here. She hesitated not a moment in taking over their management. As a result, “Mrs. Klausman” as she was respectfully known in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania, put her mark on selling whiskey.

With the help of her bartender, Mrs. Klausman not only kept all the businesses open, she prospered by selling both at wholesale and retail her own brands of whiskey. Taking a leaf from the liquor wholesalers and rectifiers of the time, she bought whiskey from both Pennsylvania and Kentucky, sometimes blending the spirits, bottling them and then applying her own labels. My favorite is Mrs. Klausman’s “Corn Whiskey,” with its predominantly yellow label showing a rural distillery and a shock of corn, a design worthy of one of the big liquor outfits.

In 1920, however, National Prohibition brought a close to the thriving business she was doing in whiskey sales. Moreover, the hotel bar no longer could serve alcohol. Regardless of these setback, she persevered in running the German House through the 1930s. No evidence exists that after repeal of National Prohibition in 1934, she went back to liquor sales. When Catherine died in 1963, at the age of 88, she was buried next to her late husband in the St. Marys Cemetery. The German House remains standing as part of the town’s historic district on Railroad Street.

These five women helped pave the way for the many women who have engaged in the whiskey trade since Prohibition and today fill some of the top spots in the Nation’s liquor industry.

Note: Author Fred Minnick has written an interesting book on “Whiskey Women,” detailing the effects that women, past and present, have had on the American distilled spirits business. It was through his writing that I came upon Mary Jane Blair. Minnick failed, however, to pick up on his radar Mary Dowling, Lovisa McCullough, Mary Moll, and Catherine Klausman. I am hopeful that this piece will bring these other four outstanding “whiskey women” the attention they also justly deserve. For those interested in more details about these five women I have written more extended vignettes on each on my other blog, preprohibitionwhiskeymen@blogspot.com.

In November 2015 this blog featured a series of pre-Prohibition ads in which the automobile and beer drinking were juxtaposed in a fashion that would be generally unacceptable today. In the ensuing months I have found a number of other examples of drinking and driving that deserve some scrutiny. Although almost all of the examples here are from beer ads, I begin with one right from a whiskey dealer.

He was C. H. Ritter, a liquor wholesaler from Detroit, noted for issuing this humorous saloon sign for his flagship brand, Westminster Rye. Done by fine lithograph, the image was of a young man offering a drink to a local farmer. A closer look showed a pig lying dead in the road, apparently struck by a roadster from which three passengers are watching. The title is “Settled Out ofCourt” and implies that a drink of Westminster Rye is so appealing that the farmer will let he motorist off the hook for the death of his hog. Representing the dawning of the automotive age, Ritter’s sign likely was a favorite of the drinking crowd.

While Ritter’s farmer seems ready to trade a sip of whiskey for his hog, the farmer in the Falstaff beer ad above appears to be less convinced that a glass of foaming brew will pay for the wreck of his wagon and the spillage of his apples on the road. Entitled “The Peacemaker,” this was a lithographed saloon sign issued by the Lemp Brewery of St. Louis. Note that the owner of the errant automobile has come well stocked. From the hamper at his feet are peeking several bottles of Falstaff.

Ruhstaller was a West Coast brewery, founded in 1898 and located in the heart of Sacramento California. It provided a lithographed image on a serving tray that would have been given to saloons and restaurants carrying its Gilt Edge beer. A young dude, apparently the driver, is pouring a beer for two female riders. A full bottle and a glass remain, indicating that the driver himself will imbibe before driving on.

The Edelweiss beer ad is entitled “A Case of Good Judgment.” Is this a double entendre message? Can it mean both a wise buy of beer as well as where the case is stowed, safely away from the driver and passengers? Edelweiss was a brand of beer made by the Schoenhofen Brewing Company of Chicago. The founder, Peter Schoenhofen was a Prussian immigrant who was working in the brewing trade as early as 1850.

This saloon sign shows two couples being served at curbside. A waiter in a tuxedo has come from the confines of his restaurant to serve the motorists. The Oshkosh Brewing Company was formed in 1894 with the merger of three Oshkosh, Wisconsin, breweries facing a tsunami of beer from Milwaukee. Both Schlitz and Pabst had created distribution centers in a town known for its voracious beer drinkers. With their survival in doubt, the three combined to create a viable brewery.

Although no open alcohol is on display in this saloon sign, Schell’s Carbonated Mead was no mere soft drink, but a fermented beverage involving honey. The New Ulm, Minnesota, company is still around, second only to Yuengling as the Nation’s oldest family-owned brewery. Founded in 1860, Schell claims that through the years it has produced at least 100 varieties of “German craft beer.”

The Seattle Brewing & Malt Company, from the city of the same name, was famous for its Rainier Beer for which this picture was an ad. The automobile shown here clearly is one of the earliest models, steered with a lever rather than a wheel. Interestingly, unlike all the other vehicles shown here, it is being driven by a woman while her male companion looks on from the passenger seat.

Of Seib Beer I can find little information. Its founder appears to have been William Seib, who is credited with bringing scientific knowledge to bear on the brewing process. His brewery may have been in the Chicago vicinity. Here on a lithographed pin an early automobile with passengers is stopped on the road, apparently stymied by a huge bottle of beer smack in the middle.

The final example is an advertising sign from the early post-Prohibition era. It shows an automobile that has frightened a horse but not a dog, the latter barking at the white-garbed driver who is attempting to crank the vehicle to life. Pabst issued a series of these signs, all of them aimed at eliciting nostalgic responses about the “good old days” from potential customers.

This image ends this second parade of drinking and driving examples from the people who ran some of America’s notable breweries and one liquor house. While the close proximity of alcohol and gasoline in advertising today would be unthinkable, in earlier times drinking and driving was definitely cool.

Labels: C. H. Ritter & Co., Falstaff Beer, Ruhstaller’s Gilt Edge Beer, Oshkosh Brewing Co., Schell’s Carbonated Mead, drinking and driving, Eidelweiss Beer, Rainier Beer, Seib Beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon,

While never owning any, I have been fascinated by back-of-the bar bottles (BoBB), the line of fancy containers shown above. Gifted by distillers and liquor wholesalers in the pre-Prohibition era to favored customers like saloons and restaurants, the bottles were among the most expensive giveaways, often featuring fine glass and gold accents. They were expected to catch the eye of the patron — and did. Because the legislation that accompanied the rollback of Prohibition outlawed them, today most of these bottles are more than 100 years old. Displaying well, they are eagerly are sought by collectors.

A good example of the value these bottles have achieved is the the one shown right. It was issued by Julius Goldbaum, a pioneer whiskey man in Tucson, Arizona. Although most such bottles are clear glass, Goldbaum chose his in amber with white and gold accents. The results are a stunning bottle of which only a few are known. One recently sold at auction for over $22,000.

In featuring back-of-the-bottles, it occurred to me to feature one wholesale house that stood out for the variety of attractive items it issued — Rosskam, Gerstley & Co. Isaac Rosskam and his wife’s kinsman, Henry Gerstley, both immigrants from Germany, had settled in Philadelphia and in 1869 opened the doors of their establishment. The company initially was located at 336 North Third Street but within a year had moved to larger quarters at 402 North Third, where it would stay until 1876.” Their proprietary brands were “Old Saratoga,” “Monogram," and “Fine Old Whiskey.”

Reflecting the rapid and impressive growth of its business volume, the partners that year moved to two new buildings. One was five stories at 226 S. Front Street that advertised “Rye & Bourbon Whiskies” on the storefront. The other at 133-135 Dock Street of six stories proclaimed “Old Rye Whiskies.” Both locations allowed the firm adequate space to undertake “rectifying,” that is, blending whiskey bought from multiple sources to achieve tastes determined to have broad public appeal.

As their business grew the partners branched out into other cities. In 1870 the partners opened an office in Cleveland at 100 River Street. About 1882 they located an outlet in Chicago at 79 Dearborn Avenue, one of the Windy City’s premier commercial locations. That was followed a year later by their establishing a branch at 38 Broadway in New York City. This proliferation of outlets indicated the kind of vigorous national customer base Rosskam, Gerstley built over time.

Because Philadelphia, and indeed the U.S., was loaded with distillers, rectifiers, and wholesalers, the partners had to combat stiff competition for the business of restaurants, bars and saloons to stock their liquor. They also had to appeal to members of the drinking public to request their brands from bartenders. One way of advertising was to provide giveaway items that contained the name of a Rosskam, Gerstley products. Although the partners gave away tip trays and shot glasses, they specialized in elegant back-of-the-bar bottles.

These included bottles in fancy molded glass with stoppers,ornate gold lettering, and in one case a metal or pewter body. Shapes varied from bulbous bases to ginger jar shapes to straight sided bottles. At least one was metal. Lettering might be in script, squared-off letters or san serif, and colored black, gold or cobalt blue. I have counted at least twenty-one varieties of Rosskam, Gerstley & Co. bar bottles. Nine of them are illustrated throughout this post. No other distiller or whiskey house comes close in number or variety. Isaac and Henry were the kings of the back bar.

At the turn of the Century, things changed at thePhiladelphia liquor house. In 1899, Henry Gerstley died at age 61 at his residence. As Rosskam aged he turned over the reins of management to his son. A 1900 Philadelphia business directory lists William Rosskam as president of the firm. In 1904 Isaac died, age about 70. According to the press, he left a large estate. Although the company continued to prosper for a time under William, eventually it was forced to shut down by the enactment of National Prohibition.

The banning of bar bottles after the end of Prohibition was the result of their having been used for purposes that neither Rosskam nor Gerstley would have approved. Bartenders had a tendency when “Old Saratoga” or another whiskey had been dispensed from its fancy bar bottle to refill it with an inferior brand and cheerfully pour it out to customers under false pretenses. Today bottles behind the bar must be the container in which the liquor was sold, carrying an original label and tax stamps.

That leaves a treasure trove of back-of-the-bar bottles. They steadily grow older and all of them will have achieved “antique” status by 1920. No more will be made and I have seen little evidence of fraudulence. Many can be bought for under $200. Attractive and displaying well, they are certain to accrue in desirability and value in the future.

After more than a half century living and working in and around the Nation’s Capital, I have had an opportunity to meet a number of Chiefs of State. The years have brought perfunctory handshakes with three American presidents (Kennedy, Johnson and Carter) as well as with foreign leaders like Tito of Yugoslavia, Marcos of the Philippines, Suharto of Indonesia, and Nguyen Van Thieu of Vietnam. They do not bestow the same quality of remembrance as do up close and personal encounters with leaders of counties — as recalled here.

From 1976 until 1981 I served in the Carter Administration as the Assistant Administrator responsible for all the Agency for International Development programs from the Khyber Pass to Hawaii. This brought me in contact with Asian leaders, often a context of negotiating agreements on development programs. Upon occasion those discussions would involve a Chief of State. Here are stories of three such encounters.

My first venture into a presidential office was in Bangladesh in 1978. I went alone to meet Ziaur Rahman, a major figure in the country’s independence from Pakistan who was considered a reformer. He had fostered multi-party politics, freedom of the press, free speech and free markets. He had initiated large agricultural efforts and initiated social programs. The U.S. was assisting him by massive shipments of food that could be given away or sold to provide funds for government services.

Even before I took office, those shipments had become a problem. Critics were showing photographs of American “Food for Peace” grain piling up on Bangladeshi docks or in makeshift earthen “warehouses” where rats were feasting. At the same time, however, some USAID personnel were telling me that there was insufficient food stockpiled and a danger that famine might return to the country. Reaching the correct balance in supplies was critical — and my responsibility.

That day, however, I was to speak to President Zia about reducing the amount of food on the idea that such imports discouraged domestic production of grains, something Zia was himself interested in doing. It was just the two of us in his modest office. He was very patient about hearing me out and the said very quietly,“Mr. Sullivan, if food shortages occur the rioters will not be coming to hang you, they will be coming for me.” Internally I had to agree and left without further argument.

On my way out in the parking lot I noticed the Volkswagon Beetle that Zia famously drove to work in by himself — no chauffeur — and marveled that a man who already had had a dozen coup attempts aimed at him could move about with so little security. His luck ran out in 1981 when he was assassinated by disgruntled Army officers. Bangladesh lost a marvelous leader.

My next adventure with a Chief of State was in Sri Lanka. For reason I still have never figured out, one or two scientists at the Smithsonian Institution in 1979 had decided that Sri Lanka was not doing well by its elephants and, through higher ups in the Agency, insisted that I meet personally withPresident J. R. Jayewardene,shown right, to discuss the problem. I had been in Sri Lanka before and had no experience of those noble animals being abused.

Regardless of my personal misgivings, I asked for an interview and Jayewardene granted one on a Sunday at his home. After a life in political activism he had become president of the country in his 70s and was noted as a “tough old bird.” Nevertheless, he was very gracious as he ushered me onto a comfortable couch in his library and offered tea. He was alone except for servants. I explained why I was there and the concerns of my fellow Americans.

After hearing me out, almost lounging in his chair, Jayewardene responded: “I am the biggest environmentalist in Sri Lanka and the greatest protector of the elephants. Where a railroad crosses a well-used elephant trail, we build a trestle so that the elephants can cross underneath.” I had seen and photographed just such a structure. He followed up: “Do you do that for wildlife in your country?” I gulped hard and had to admit — no — and left shortly after.

In 1978 the Carter Administration had decided to re-establish an aid program to India that had been cut off at the time of the Bangladesh War. A skeptical Congress decreed that the Indians first would have to ask for aid. An equally skeptical Indian government thought the U.S. formally should offer it first. How to break this dilemma? One dark and rainy night in 1978 the USAID Administrator, John Gilligan, and I went to the residence of Prime Minister Moraji Desai in hopes of a breakthrough.

Greeted by Desai’s aides, we were strictly advised that our meeting could go on for no longer than 15 minutes and that we would be timed to the second. Desai arrived alone. The early conversation between Gilligan and the prime minister was theological, comparing Hindu religious thought with Christianity. Five minutes went by along those lines — and then another five. I could feel the cold sweat beginning to run down my sides. Transmigration of souls was dominating the dialogue as both participants seemed to be warming to the subject even more intensely. A voice inside my head began shouting: “Time, time, time” as more minutes slipped by and we had yet to begin the real discussion.

Barely a minute remained when Gilligan broke off the theological discourse and asked abruptly: “If the United States were to offer foreign assistance, would you be willing to take it.” In an Zen-like response, Desai replied,“If we were willing to take it, would you offer it?” There ensued barely perceptible affirmative nods on both sides. Satisfied that the Gordian Knot had been cut, Gilligan immediately stood up, shook Desai’s hand, told him we would meet with his top government officials the next day to hammer out details, and we left. Fifteen seconds remained. We did not look back.

If lessons can be taken from these three interactions with Chiefs of State, it is that they are meetings of high intensity for the visitor whose outcomes can never be accurately predicted beforehand. One inevitably leaves relieved that the encounter is over — but with memories for a lifetime.

The British started it. Their advertising geniuses by the mid-1800s had figured out that by putting celebrity faces in ads — people like Queen Victoria — the attention of the public was virtually assured. Their U.S. counterparts were not long in copying. Among those singled out were the Good — the young and beautiful wife of a President, the Bad — the notorious wife of a millionaire, and the Shootist — a woman whose rifle was her livelihood.

The Good — Frances Folsom Cleveland. A close friend of Frances’ father, Grover Cleveland met his future wife shortly after she was born. As she grew up, he doted on her and the bachelor’s feelings toward her turned romantic while she was still in college. Now President, the 49-year-old Cleveland proposed, she accepted, and at 21 she married him in the White House in June 1886. The ad men had a field day. Her face appeared on trade cards in both photo and illustration advertising a wide range of products.

At right is a colorized portrait of Frances that frequently was used. This one was issued by the Philip Best Brewing Company of Milwaukee, the forerunner of the Pabst Brewery. It advertises the “Best” Tonic, an alcoholic elixir that was alleged to be concentrated liquid malt and hops, capable of curing dyspepsia, strengthening the system, and just the thing for nursing mothers. Identified on the cards as “Mrs. President Cleveland,” Frances’ image could be obtained by sending 12 coupons obtained — one each — on bottles of “Best” Tonic.

My favorite image of Mrs. Cleveland is the illustration above on a trade card for Ivory Tooth Polish. Done pointillist style it is a strong representation of the First Lady, one that increases her appeal by showing a few strands of hair out of place. It clearly was drawn from the photograph shown right. There Frances is advertising “Seal of North Carolina Plug Cut Tobacco,” claimed to smoke cool, last long, and “not bite the tongue.” By softening the eyes and providing a fuller mouth, the drawing presents a much handsomer woman.

The Sparks Medicine Company of Camden, New Jersey, found it expedient to use a photo of Frances to advertise its “Sparks’ Perfect Health” nostrum, said to be a remedy for kidney and liver distress. Dating from about 1885, her image appears on in a transfer printed ironstone plate that likely was available upon submission of coupons. Issued by the Sparks Medicine Company of Camden, New Jersey, it was designed by Robert H. Payne of another Camden firm, “Porcelain Show Cards.”

The “Lady of the White House” was not done any favors by the Yatisi Corset Company for its trade card picture of her. She seems intensely absorbed in some task, perhaps getting accustomed to her Yatisi corset, claimed on the back of the card to be “recommended by all the prominent physicians in all the leading cities of the U. States and Canada.” She was, however, guaranteed to to be able to return it after wearing for ten days and have her money refunded.

A final look at the First Lady is a trade card from W. F.McLaughlin Company, a coffee merchant located in Chicago. William Francis McLaughlin came from Cloneybecan House in county Laois, Ireland, from a well-to-do family and a college graduate. He started from the bottom in Chicago, however, first selling coffee beans from a wheelbarrow and then from a wagon. He eventually owned several mansions on Rush Street and the family had several estates in Lake Forest.

The Bad - Florence Evelyn Nesbit. While the Clevelands likely looked askance at the use of Frances’ face to sell tobacco, toothpaste and corsets, Ms. Nesbit reveled in the ad role. She was a celebrity, later to be known as “the girl in the red velvet swing,” for her role in sex parties staged by famed architect Standford White. Her millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, subsequently gunned White down in a rooftop restaurant at Madison Square Garden, insuring her notoriety.

At the outset of the 20th Century Nesbit’s figure and face were everywhere, appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements, and on souvenir items and calendars, often in suggestive modes. The image left, with bare skin and lily was typical of the pose Florence or Evelyn — she answered to either — adopted for doting photographers and artists.

Rainier Beer, by contrast, chose to present Nesbit on a serving platter looking like a “Phi Beta Kappa” graduate of an exclusive girls seminary. Note her modest garments and her hands folded if in prayer. The original brewery dates all the way back to 1854 when A.B. Rabbeson opened Washington Brewery, which was Seattle’s first commercial brewing company.In 1872, Rabbeson renamed his brewery Seattle Brewery. They launched Rainier beer in 1878.

It has been said of this damsel: “By the time of her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions as the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty, and whose innocent sexuality was used to sell everything from chocolates to perfume.” Make that “supposedly innocent.” As shown here, she could even be used to sell newspapers. The ad references her role in a 1902 Broadway musical comedy called The Wild Rose.” It ran 136 performances.

The Shootist — Annie Oakley. Our final female celebrity had thousands of performances. Born Phoebe Ann Mosey, Oakley adopted the stage name after being discovered at 15 years old when she won a shooting match with Frank Butler, a nationally known marksman who later became her husband. After becoming a famous international star, performing before royalty and heads of state, Oakley became a prime ingredient for the advertising mill.

A prime attraction for the Buffalo Bill Wild West show, she was often showcased in the color flyers and broadsides for the extravaganza. Note that in the upper right of the sheet above, Oakley is shooting while riding a bicycle. The Sterling Bicycle Company of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not long in picking up on that ability and featuring Annie in their ads. In 1898 Sterling won a silver medal for its “chainless bicycle” at the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition. Two years later company went bankrupt.

Du Pont, the chemical company of Wilmington, Delaware, also was quick to pick up on the fame of Annie Oakley. An advertising paperweight showed a gent with five playing cards, each of which had been plugged in an appropriate place by the female sharpshooter. Her bullets, it suggested, had been with “Lesmok,” ammunition loaded with a substance that was “accurate and clean” with “no corrosive effect.”

A singular difference between Oakley and Nesbit or Folsom is that Annie has continued to be featured in ads. In the 1950s, for example, she was used to sell Canada Dry ginger ale. A recent ad, shown here, is from Red Ants Pants, a clothing manufacturer located in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, a town of less than 1,000. Oakley is presented as a woman who forged the way for those who followed.

Presented here have been three women and three paths to celebrity. Regardless how they got there — being good, or bad, or a shootist — made no difference to the ad gurus. Fame was, and still is, the name of the ad game.

Long before the U.S. space program had put men on the moon, the geniuses responsible for beer advertising had put a woman there. The most iconic of these is the “High Life Girl” shown here on a bar mirror exactly as she looked 110 years ago when the Miller Brewing Company made her their symbol. The mirror currently can be bought at Home Depot.

The Miller girl, however, was not the first young maid to grace a beer promotion. That honor may go to a French poster dated 1895 that was entitled “Bieres du Croissant” showing a damsel with a large bread product in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. It is done in the “art nouveau” fashion so popular at the time. Her large hat may have had an influence on subsequent images.

A Canadian brewery was also ahead of Miller in depicting a moon maiden. That image, shown here, seemingly dates

from about 1900. Eugene O’Keefe, a wealthy banker, purchased an existing Ontario brewery and renamed O’Keefe & Company. It was the first to produce lager beer in Canada, along with ales and porters. O’Keefe was one of the first brewers to use trucks for beer delivery, first to build a mechanically refrigerated warehouse and one of the first to advertise extensively.

Nor did Miller Brewing immediately set the girl swinging in the heavens.

Miller High Life Beer first hit the market on December 30, 1903. Soon after its release, it was advertised with a drawing of a woman in what looked like a circus costume, complete with whip, standing on a crate of Miller High Life and offering up the “Champagne of Bottle Beers.” Over the years various members of the Miller family have claimed an ancestor as the model for the girl but none has proved definitive.

Why Miller decided to send her aloft has been lost in the mists of time. One account has the company advertising manager, A. C. Paul, hiking alone in the Wisconsin North Woods — possibly lost — suddenly struck with a vision of the High Life Girl on a moon. When he returned to Miller’s Milwaukee headquarters he ordered the sky-high images. And the rest is history.

The image was promoted vigorously and seemingly caught on quickly with the drinking public. The brewery provided its customers with wall signs, bar mirrors, and serving trays featuring the girl in the moon. Retail customers were gifted with metal “pin backs” at beer gardens and festivals.

I have been particularly taken with the enameled watch fobs bearing the Miller High Life Girl. Those items were given away to special customers and meant to be displayed on the outside of a vest or coat, attached to a watch stowed in a chest-level pocket. The two shown here clearly were produced by different artisans, each with their own ideas of appropriate colors. On the one at right the girl’s hair appears to have obscured her eyes.

With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920 the Miller girl got a rest. With Repeal in 1934, the brewery resumed normal business and she returned, this time with a somewhat different look. While earlier she had been in profile, seemingly looking off toward some distant star now she was facing the public directly, no longer a girl but a mature woman, a “glamor girl” perhaps. This more realistic image was equally promoted with manifestations in many forms, including the crown tops on Miller beer.

With the further passage of time, as shown on a Miller bar sign, the figure of the High Life Girl evolved two more times, with the last manifestation the one at far left, an illustration meant to convey a symbol rather than a realistic pose. Its more contemporary look has found favor. The image shown here is a bar stool seat that can be purchased on-line. Thus, this icon in its several forms continues to fascinate the beer drinking public.

As with other successful symbols, Miller’s girl-in-the-moon had its imitators. Falstaff Brewing had its roots in a brewery founded in 1940 in St. Louis by a German immigrant named Johann Adam Lemp. The name was changed to Falstaff Brewing with the featured brew of the same name. The company about 1910 issue a trade card called “The Falstaff Serenade.” drawn by Swedish-American artist, Valentine Sandberg. The card shows a garlanded young woman playing a mandolin and singing to an shining Falstaff logo.

What was good enough for beer also provided a symbol for Lafayette Club Whiskey, trademarked with the federal government by the Frank Murphy Co. of Chillicothe, Ohio. Murphy registered as a trade mark a woman in a gown sitting on a moon while another woman holds up a globe (presumably the earth) on which is written“Old Lafayette Club is unexcelled by any whiskey on earth.”

In addition to imitators any successful icon is sure to get its caricatures. Such is the drawing here of the girl-in-the-moon. The cartoon is by George Coghill who contends that Miller is one of his favorite beers and that after seeking a t-shirt with the image to no avail, so he made his own drawing after deciding she should look more “witch-like.” On his website he wrote: “I also decided to give her a shorter skirt, as well as hike it up a bit and show more leg. She's also a bit more busty than the previous version. Definitely going for more of a pin-up style with her this time around.”

My guess is that the Miller girl-in-the-moon will be with us in one form or another for a very long time to come. Having survived 110 years even as advertising fashions and social mores have changed massively, this icon has demonstrated staying power matched by few other ad symbols. Whatever kind of epiphany Mr. Paul may have had, lost among the pines, it has proved to be a winner.

R-r-rats! Rats! Rats!

Rough on Rats,

Hang your dogs and drown your cats;

We give a plan for every man,

To clear his house with “Rough on Rats.”

Recently my doctor suggested that I begin a regimen of a blood thinner called “warfarin.” When I suggested that this medicine began existence as a rat poison, he readily agreed. That encounter got me thinking about an artifact I recently bought at a bottle show, a small metal box containing an earlier, very popular American vermin poison called “Rough on Rats.”

Shown here, the box lid is a colorful celluloid picture of a Chinese gentleman with a long pigtail, a cooly hat, and an embroidered tunic who apparently is about to eat a rat while in his other hand he holds a second rat, apparently also about to be consumed. The racist image perpetuated a long-held belief among some Americans that the Chinese on a regular basis ate live rats as a snack. The Chinese also appeared in “Rough on Rats” advertising.

Trading on anti-Chinese prejudice in the U.S., however, was not the primary sin of Ephriam S. Wells, a New Jersey druggist who invented “Rough on Rats.” It was his seeming indifference to the other effects of his product that soon became associated with a significant increase in murders and suicides by poisoning. As Professor Loren Gatch has described: “Thanks to Wells, Americans were poisoning each other in increasingly large numbers. Newspapers of the era were littered with lurid accounts of the despondent and depraved.”

Unlike Europe and other European countries, the United States had no national poison control laws and state regulation often was weak and inconsistent during the late 1800s. Despite “Rough on Rats” being largely white arsenic with some fillers, Wells was able to able to elude laws some state laws that outlawed the sale of poisons to minors or required registration when sold to adults by marketing his arsenic under its trade name. Nowhere in its ads or packaging were there warning to humans.

“If Wells felt any ethical qualms about the abuse of his rat poison, he never recorded them,” noted Prof. Gatch. Rather he concentrated his effort on merchandising the product through humorous and often colorful magazine ads and trade cards. “I desire to state,” Wells announced, “that I have written all my own advertisements and designed all my own cuts and illustrations without a single exception.” The lighthearted treatment of the druggist’s nostrum also acted to deflect concern among the public about its lethal qualities. Above, for example, are six variously colored cats all gazing in astonishment at a can of “Rough on Rats.” The caption reads: “Our occupation gone — Rough on Rats Did it.”

What more amusing subject for an ad could there be than a bespectacled rat with pointer who is describing to smaller rats the dangers of Wells’ product. “This is what killed your poor father. Shun it!” the ad reads. Avoid anything containing it throughout your future useful careers. We older heads object to its special roughness.”

A similar card, shown below, includes the other pests “Rough on Rats” was to eliminate, including gophers, chipmunks, mice, flies, roaches, ants and even down to bed bugs.

Still another colorful Wells trade card depicted a rat being chased in turn by a cat, a dog, a boy with a hatchet, a man with a whiskey bottle, and a woman with a broom. The druggist took advantage of this card to market other proprietary medicines he had invented, including “Well’s Health Reserve,” and “Mother Swan’s Worm Syrup. Wells also featured a series of “Rough on” medications to remedy toothaches, itches, corns and even piles (hemorrhoids).

In 1982 Wells took the additional step of publicizing his rat poison by commissioning sheet music to sing its praises, anticipating the advertising jingle. The song was created by two well-known music men of the time. W. A. Boston wrote the lyrics including the chorus, repeated several times, that opens this post. The music, by Juniper Jones, was suggested as suitable for dancing.

Working from his factory located at the corner of Grand Street and Summit Avenue, Wells concentrated on selling “Rough on Rats” and his other products full time through mail order sales, with extravagant spending on advertising in the United States and other English speaking countries. It paid off. Over the next twelve years his profits exceeded $2 million, equivalent to $50 million today, from individual sales of items costing ten to twenty-five cents. Shown here is a company check that features the rat poison and various other Wells products.

Beginning as a lowly drug store clerk and often on the brink of bankruptcy, Well’s concoction of a powder that was odorless and tasteless to its rodent victims but deadly, eventually brought him fame and fortune — even though “Rough on Rats,” a name suggested by his wife, too frequently also was administered to humans. In the last decade of his life Wells retired to his summer house in Glenmoore, New Jersey, living like a country squire and raising horses.

Wells died — of natural causes — in March 1913, leaving a substantial estate. The “Rough on Rats” brand continued to be sold into the 1950s. Like other successful nostrums, it attracted copycats, one of them perpetuating the racist Chinese image.

Note: Thanks to Professor Loren Gatch for much of the information provided in this post as well as for a number of the images shown here. Professor Gatch was associated with the University of Oklahoma when he published an article on Wells and his anti-Chinese bias.

Among the manufacturing and service industries regularly presenting the public with giveaway advertising items like paperweights and pocket mirrors, the shoe industry of the early 20th Century stands out as a major participant. On September 28, 2012, I presented on this blog a group of 10 paperweights under the title “Shoes Preserved Under Glass.” Herein is presented eleven advertising pocket mirrors — all related to the footwear industry. They present the fashion in the shoes of the time as well as the methods of merchandising. Just as important they point up major changes taking place in shoe manufacturing.

In 1904, a cartoonist named Richard Outcault went to the St. Louis World’s Fair where he hoped to sell the rights to a pair of comic page characters he had created known as Buster Brown and his dog, Tige. Among buyers was a St. Louis shoe manufacturer named George Warren Brown. For the princely sum of $200 he bought the rights to feature the pair in his marketing and never looked back. In ensuing years Buster and Tige became closely identified with Brown’s shoes, as on the pocket mirror shown here. By 1958, largely through creative advertising, the Buster Brown line had become the largest brand of footwear for children.

Contrast that pocket mirror with a similar item for Granby Rubbers. This mirror is in black and white with a photo of a young girl seemingly stuffed into an overshoe, a clumsy image. The Granby Rubber Co. was a Canadian outfit founded by Samuel Henderson Campbell Miner in 1882 to manufacture rubber clothing items, including“…Rubbers for city or country and Overshoes for country.” His factory, one that reputedly made 5,000 to 6,000 pairs of shoes daily, was located in Grandy said to be Miner’s “… town financially and sentimentally.” The boss was mayor for more than two decades.

A similarly conservative figure was August Schreiner of Rochester, New York, who advertised the “The Snow Shoe” on a pocket mirror. A shoe and boot trade publication in 1916 said of him: “Mr. Schreiner is one of a very few of our old shoemen who continue to make custom shoes. This, he says, obliges his older customers and he does quite a brisk business in this line.” In less than three years, however, Schreiner was advertising in the local newspaper the equivalent of a bankruptcy sale, saying” “A force of circumstances, which none could foresee, prompts this action.”

While Schriener was harking back to the days of the village shoemaker where footwear was made customer by customer, industrialization had long since taken shoe manufacturing out of the workshop and into the factory. Even then an outfit like the Stonefield-Evans Shoe Company of Rockford, Illinois, was insisting that it employed only “highly skilled tradesmen.” Acquired by Sam Stonefield, who had started in work in a shoe factory when he was ten years old, the factory made only men’s shoes employing 140 of those skilled cobblers, keeping output at a modest 600 pairs daily.

By contrast, the Bradley & Metcalf Company of Milwaukee, one of the largest boot and shoe manufacturers in the Northwest, even as early as 1870 was replacing those skilled workers. A company foreman told a local newspaper that of the 450 men now employed in the establishment,“Perhaps not more than ten were sufficiently skilled to be of any service ten or fifteen years ago.” The Bradley & Metcalf spokesman added: “The simple fact proved to be that the division of labor — one single and simple operation being assigned to each class of workmen — and the introduction of machinery has enabled manufacturers to substitute unskilled for skilled labor.” Indeed, in some shoe factories the workforce might include child labor.

Conditions in shoe factories were such to spur the development of a strong and militant labor union for shoemakers by 1889, evolving to become the Boot and Shoe Worker Union (BSWU) of the AFL. Regarded as a “radical” union in its early days, the BSWU was formed to establish uniform wages for the same class of work, including equal pay for women, and to abolish child, convict, and contract (low paying home industry) labor. The union was international, including French-speaking Canadian workers.

The presence of a labor union made shoe manufacturers increasingly concerned about keeping their workers happy. Among them was Thomas Gustave Plant, a French-Canadian immigrant who made his fortune manufacturing footwear under the Queen Quality Shoes label. His largest shoe factory was in Roxbury (now Jamaica Plain) Massachusetts and self-proclaimed to be the largest shoe factory in the world. Plant provided numerous innovations and amenities for his employees, including a company park where they could have lunch and recreate. And not just another park. Completed in 1913, the facility was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., park architect son of the man who developed Central Park in New York City.

Despite occasional labor unrest, communities were eager to have shoe factories locate within their boundaries. The Friedman-Shelby Shoe Co. of St. Louis in 1907 built a factory in Kirksville, a community of about 20,000 in North Central Missouri but only after the town had furnished a free site, free water for five years and tossed in a bonus of $60,000, equivalent to almost $1.5 million today. For its investment Kirksville secured employment for 300 workers who produced 1,800 to 2,000 pairs of shoes daily. Friedman-Shelby sold the 60 by 300 foot four story factory to another shoe company in 1916. Reflecting consolidation occurring in the industry, Florsheim Shoe Company eventually bought it and shut it in 1973.

The “Enna Jettick” shoe brings us back to the wardrobe changes that were affecting the industry. As shirts got shorter and shorter, women were giving more attention to make fashion statements with their shoes and investing more money in them. The company behind this brand was Dunn & McCarthy, a shoe manufacturer of Auburn, New York, in business since 1867. The Enna Jettick line was issued during the flapper era of the 1920s and, true to the zany antics of that era, advertised with its own blimp airship. In Auburn, the company bought a park on the banks of Cayuga Lake, installed a merry-go-round, and in 1930 named it Enna Jettick Park.

The face of each of these pocket mirrors shows us the image that the advertiser chose in order to sell his products. Behind each mirror is a story of an industry in flux virtually from the end of the Civil War until the 1920s as the transition from village cobbler to industrialized manufacturing occurred and changed forever the way shoes are made and merchandised.

Note: For anyone interested in the origins of the celluloid-backed pocket mirror as an advertising giveaway, I have treated that subject in a post of July 4, 2009.

Among the most familiar images to Americans was the crash of the Hindenburg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, killing 36 of the 97 people aboard. It was not, however, the greatest airship disaster. That was the destruction of the USS Akron in a storm off the New Jersey coast on April, killing 73 of the 76 crewmen and passengers aboard. Representing the greatest loss of life in any airship crash, today the accident is little remembered.

In its heyday, the Navy’s airship Akron washighly publicized resulting in a number of images and artifacts. The Akron and her sister ship the Macon were among the largest flying objects ever made. While the German zeppelins were larger, they were filled with hydrogen. The Navy craft hold the world record for helium-filled airships. A photograph shows the interior of the huge hangar where the Akron and Macon were constructed. Called the Goodyear Airdock, it was constructed in 1929 at an equivalent cost today of $26.4 million. When it was built it was the largest structure in the world without interior supports. It encompassed 364,000 square feet of space, an area equal to eight football fields placed side by side.

It is there that the Akron, shown here under construction, was built. The airship was 785 feet long and had a hull diameter of 133 feet and a height of 146 feet, six inches. The skeleton was formed of a new lightweight alloy called “duraluminun 17.”

Zeppelin and other rigid designs used a single keel at the lowest point of the hull circumference but theAkron boasted three keels, one running along the top of the hull and one on each side, 45 degrees up from the lower centerline. Each keel provided a walkway running almost the entire length of the ship. The strength of the main rings, the lower keels, and the fact that helium, instead of flammable hydrogen, was to be used, also allowed the designer to mount the engines inside the hull, improving streamlining. Goodyear was extraordinarily proud of theAkron issuing a postcardshowing the airship protruding from its airlock.

The city of Akron, indeed all of Ohio, was proud of this flying behemoth. A postcard depicts the ship flying over the skyline. Akron has had many nicknames, one of which is "City of Invention”. The third would include this airship. She was the world’s first flying aircraft carrier, with the capacity for holding F9C Sparrowhawk fighter-reconnaissance planes in its belly. Using a crude hooking system, the planes could be launched and recovered while the Akron was in flight.

Another photo showed the Akron floating over New York City in 1933. It was powered by eight Maybach (German) in line engines hitched to two wooden propellers, each of which was two bladed. The airship was capable the making 63 miles an hour cruising speed and a maximum speed of 79 miles an hour. Its fuel capacity was 20,700 gallons weighting 126,000 pounds. That gave the airship a range of 6,840 miles without refueling.

The Akron’s first transcontinental flight in May 1932 was recognized with a special envelope marking the occasion. Leaving from Lakehurst, it took more than 44 hours to reach San Diego, slightly faster than delivery by train. The cover shown here gives no clue to what happened on its arrival. Since neither trained ground handlers nor specialized mooring equipment were present, the landing at Camp Kearny was a dicey proposition. By the time the crew started the descent, the helium gas had been warmed by sunlight, increasing lift. The mooring cable had to be cut to avert a catastrophic nose-stand by the airship which then floated upward. Most of the mooring crew—predominantly “boot camp” seamen—released their lines although four did not immediately let go. Two of them plunged to their death, two others, although injured, were saved.

This was just a foretaste of what was to come. On the night of April 3, 1933 the Akron was on a routine operation along the Atlantic Coast with a rear admiral aboard when it encountered severe weather. Heavy winds struck its sides, causing the airship to plunge toward the ocean. A strong gust tore lower rudder cables away causing the nose of the vessel to pitch up and the tail down. Upon striking the water the lower fin was torn away as the Akron broke up rapidly and sank in the wave-tossed Atlantic. The crew had not been issued life jackets and end had come so quickly that life rafts could not be deployed. The accident left 73 dead, the admiral among them, and only three survivors. President Franklin Roosevelt called it “a national disaster.” On Memorial Day 1933 the Navy Department issued a special “In Memoriam” cover.

The loss of the Akron marked the beginning of the end for the airship in the U.S. Navy. When its sister dirigible Macon was damaged in a storm two years later and sank, the program ended. This time, however, the crew had been issued life jackets and 70 of the 72 aboard were rescued. Although today “Snoopy” may sail the Metlife blimp over the Superbowl, the use of manned airships for military purposes long has been over.

Other mementos of the Akron that may be of interest to collectors are paperweights and desk ornaments issued when the airship was still a matter of national pride. Goodyear used a blob of its dualuminum 17 to fashion a replica of the Akron’s dock that completely fails to convey the immensity of the structure. There also are other replicas of the giant balloon that come up for sale from time to time, two of them shown here.

Having early been exposed to hogs on a family farm and later as a journalist writing about livestock, I have had fixation on pigs — most precisely, the depiction of pigs in various formats. In August 2009 on this blog I posted an article entitled “Swigging the Pig,” a look at pig-shaped whiskey bottles. Subsequently I have collected a variety of swine images, some comic, others not so, and believe it time to visit this pig pen.

The first object is a ceramic sow who is eagerly drinking from a jug of whiskey. This figurine graced my office for decades, part of the collection of hillbilly items that surrounded my work space. Looking at it never ceased to amuse me, so delighted did the pig seem with its gulp of liquor. As a result of a recent downsizing, however, this image now resides in the collection of the Ralph Foster Museum on the campus of the College of the Ozarks, Point Lookout, Missouri.

No company in the U.S. is more closely identified with swine than the Cudahy Packing Company. Founded by immigrant Irish brothers, it was carried forward over the years by family members who expanded its operations from Milwaukee to other cities and became one of America’s largest pork packing houses. The Omaha packing house was founded in 1887 by Michael Cudahy. It issued this “mechanical” trade card of a hog, shown above and below, urging viewers to pull its nose. Then are revealed sausages, a ham, bacon and a container of lard.

The French are less sensitive about the process by which such products are achieved and on a trade card from Auvergne, a region in central France, it provided an image of a happy pig slicing its own belly to obtain sausages. The message tells us that we can eat this meat with pleasure and not get tired. While the image has elicited considerable comment on the Internet, found to be from funny to disgusting, observers disagree on what “Cochon Prodique” means — the most logical explanation being that a pig provides a extremely generous amount of meat.

The pigs in the next ad provide a contrast between a hog that has been fed “Merry War Lye” and fattened up for the slaughter and a sadly emaciated one who likely will have its life spared for the time being. The fat one has been fed Merry War Lye, apparently a powdered miracle product that could be used around the farm yard for a myriad of purposes. Not only could you feed lye to your hogs but it also had uses for poultry, cattle, making soap, using on fruit trees, as fertilizer, in the barn, the silo and around the dairy.

Lots of advertisers seem to like to dress up their swine. From a Sacramento grocery comes this image of a pig complete with red striped britches, frock coat, top hat, cravat, and vest with watch fob, who is smoking a cigarette on a holder. The tag line is an enigma: “I’m a Dandy, But I’m No Dude.” Actually, a small pig raised for pet purposes is called a “Dandie Extreme,” with prices starting at $2,500 and additional fees amounting in the hundred. The porker here is touting his hams — unaware of the fate that lies ahead.

An advertising pocket mirror from the Allbright-Nell Company, seemingly based in Illinois, was unabashed in its depiction of what happens to even the best of swine. The company manufactured a mechanism and straps that held the animals in slaughter houses and butcher shops. In one of his novels, William Faulkner provided a graphic description of such hanging hogs. He says they appear to be “running into eternity.”

Another frequent use of the pig images is to show it in unlikely activities, as here, riding a roller skate. This is a framed exhortation, the kind sometimes seen on the walls of organizations that claim to be able to “change your life.” In this case, “Never Be Afraid to Try Something New.” For example, try launching your $2,500 dandie piglet on a single roller skate. Just plain fun.

Pig images also can have practical uses, like this bottle opener from Finck’s Overalls.” The company’s tagline “Wears Like a Pig’s Nose” was a phrase known throughout the country. Headquartered in Detroit, Finck made quality denim garments for farm workers and laborers — both occupational groups who might need an opener for their beer bottles. After the brand was purchased from the Finck family by a competitor it was discontinued in 1960.

The animal in its various forms also the subject of puns. Note the chaotic scene shown here on a trade card in which a thief attempting to abduct piglet is being challenged by the adult hogs in the pen. The thief is said to be in a “Pig-A-Rious Position.” My efforts to find something about Henry Max and his restaurant and refreshment saloon have gone unrewarded. Located in the Shamut District of Boston, Montgomery Place today shows no semblance of a saloon.

The final pig image needs no further explanation. As the reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel charged with covering the livestock competitions at the Wisconsin State Fair, I wrote with such poetic eloquence that I became known as “The Swinburne of the Swine Barns.” Here, however, words escape me. Except one observation: A hog as ugly as this one would never have been voted any kind of ribbon.

No, not really, but I have collected several dozen fortune slips over the years that have had particular interest. My modus operandi is to take a Chinese fortune of note and scotch tape it to a beer mug. Every so often, as the mug surface fills up, I take them off and paste them on paper. Because Wednesday, September 13, 2017, is National Fortune Cookie Day, I am prepared to reveal much of what they have told me, beginning about 1975 and up to the present day.

Early Fortunes: One fortune that clearly caught my attention went this way: “It is very possible that you will achieve greatness in your lifetime.” Well, that really did not happen. I have not sought anonymity but it has pursued me relentlessly throughout my life. More promising was another cookie fortune: “Your family is young, gifted and attractive.” I’d like to think that was true — both sons proved to be gifted and achieved advanced degrees — but none of us is young anymore.

My career involved a great deal of travel and I was able to work all over the world, but occasionally got becalmed with home office work and chafed to go abroad. Perhaps that was the situation when the following came to me: “Traveling more often is important for your health and happiness.” Another cookie provided a formula for successful travel: “You have the ability to adapt to diverse situations.”

2002-2009 Fortunes: This one seemed at least partially appropriate, if not exactly predictive: “You are a lover of words. Someday you will write a book..” By the time this showed up I had written the only serious book I would ever write — about the war powers of the President and Congress. During this period, however, I cobbled together three books on whiskey containers that were self-published and in limited editions, sold out.

“Cleaning up the past will always clear up the future!” Now that is something to think about. At the urging of friends I did a brief autobiography called “Memoirs of a Spear Carrier.” To my knowledge none of the revelations there about my past life really cleaned things up. Nor, it now seems, did the future become any more clear. For that one needs more fortune cookies.

During this period I received a cookie that had its own irony attached. It read: “You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.” It was a reminder that for a time on a newspaper I was assigned to review performances of classical music, of which I actually knew nothing. My standard line for concerts of stringed instruments was to compliment “deft fingering.” After comparing the cello to “a beautiful woman,” and throwing in a note on deft fingering, the paper relieved me of those responsibilities — to my great relief.

2009 to Present: In the most recent period, I find some fortunes prophetic. For example: “You may attend a party where strange customs prevail.” I can think of one in Micronesia a few years ago. We sat outside in a circle and a drank a liquid pounded from the root of a muddy pepper plant, strained through a palm frond. After I took one sip of the green slimy stuff, pity was taken on the haole (white person) and I was give coffee as a chaser.

Another is: “You would make a good lawyer.” That is the profession my mother had in mind for me and over the years I have been involved in making laws (Congressional staff) and criticizing them (local government). The city attorney in my city assumed I was a lawyer. My reaction is to be thankful I chose journalism instead of the law. Lots more fun and fewer responsibilities.

As I move into the twilight of life, some fortunes clearly are out of touch with reality. For instance: “You shall seek out new adventures.” And: “You have an important new business development shaping up.” Still others seem problematic:

“You will maintain health and enjoy life” and “Your winsome smile will be your sure protection.” More cogent is the following cookie-born advice: “Relish the transitions in your life — they will happen regardless.”

Ten days from now when Fortune Cookie Day rolls around, you can be sure I will be ordering in Chinese food and asking for my fortune cookie. Who knows, it may give me something to think about — and perhaps paste up for future reference.

Having examined in four previous posts the risqué images that often accompanied whiskey advertising, attention here moves to the sometimes racy, sometimesdouble entendre,world of bitters beverage merchandising.

While some bitters may not have had the same alcohol content as liquor, they almost always eclipsed the amounts found in wine and beer. For most of the 1800s, they were advertised with extravagant claims about their ability to cure all manner of diseases including malaria, kidney stones, rheumatism and even impotency. With the coming of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 most purveyors toned down their advertising to dealing with problems of digestion and defecation.

In order to spark interest, however, bitters manufacturers often resorted to advertising in trade cards and postcards with images meant to titillate the viewers. Among the leading purveyors was Lash’s Bitters, a company founded in Cincinnati and later moved to San Francisco. It specialized in “hold to the light” cards in which a fully dressed woman when lighted from behind is shown in underclothing. One is shown here.

It also could go farther in its saucy images. Shown above is a tableau in which the five senses are cited. It shows a young woman who is seeing a figure in the distance, is hearing his approach at the door, smelling the bouquet he has brought, each feeling the warmth of their embrace, and finally tasting— what?It takes little imagination to understand what is going on.

Only rarely did the bitters makers resort to nudity but Lash’s provided the public with an example that was clothed in a medical context. A doctor is examining a very attractive female patient who, according to the caption, has “heart trouble.” She has pulled up her night gown so that the attending physician can listen. Although the stethoscope was invented in 1816 and was standard equipment for U.S. physicians in 1900, this doctor has decided that an ear pressed to a breast gives a better diagnosis — or something.

George M. Pond was the manager of Lash’s branch in Chicago. Having mastered the art of selling bitters, he struck out on his own, establishing a company he called the Ponds Bitters Company located at 149-153 Fulton Street, Chicago. For some 15 years, employing many of the merchandising ploys he learned at Lash’s, he thrived. Those included risqué advertising, with several examples shown here. The first, “Stopped for a Puncture, with an outrageous double meaning, is my favorite.

The ad “Maud with her little bear behind,” shown front and back, was a somewhat bizarre take on an old knee-slapper anecdote. Shown below left is a Ponds card titled “Taking in the Sights” and the card right bears a caption indicating that the man on the phone is giving an excuse to his wife about being late for dinner.

In June 1916, the city prosecutor of Chicago filed suit against Pond’s Bitters Company, A test of the product by the health commissioner had found that Pond’s Bitters were more than 20 percent alcohol and required the company to obtain a license for selling spiritous liquor. The suit sought $200 in damages from Pond’s which likely was instantly coughed up since the amount was a small price to pay for immense profits being reaped from the bitters.

Many distillers and whiskey wholesalers featured a line of bitters — for good reason. As “medicine” they did not fall under the liquor revenue laws and escaped significant taxation. Second, bitters could be sold in dry states, counties and communities where whiskey was banned. Among those taking advantage of these opportunities was Alexander Bauer, a Chicago liquor wholesaler, with a reputation for chicanery, as well as the ribald. Look closely at this Pepsin Kola and Celery Bitters ad and the story becomes clear.

Carmeliter Bitters and its “come hither” lady bearing an “elixir of life,” poses something of a mystery regarding its origins. The several variants of the bottle are embossed with different names, including Frank R. Leonori & Co. and Burhenne & Dorn. Leonori was a New York City organization located at 82 Wall Street. Burhenne & Dorn was a liquor house in Brooklyn at 349 Hamburg Avenue. This nostrum was alleged to be for “all kidney & liver complaints.”

Union Bitters advertised that it would be found “grateful and comforting” where manhood needed to be restored or where “men have lost their self-respect.” The Union Bitters recipe is recorded containing gentian, peruvian bark, roman chamomile, quassia bark, bitter orange peel and most important, 50% alcohol. As if those ingredients were not enough to strike an erotic spark, Union Bitters provided a “mechanical” trade card which initially purports to show a peeping gent seeing a woman’s bare behind. Opening the card, it is revealed as a a pig’s hind end.

The final trade card is from Dr. Roback’s Stomach Bitters. Those in the know relate that Dr. Roback was neither a doctor nor named Roback. He was an unsuccessful farmer turned salesman who in 1844 escaped debtor’s prison in his native Sweden and headed for America. As Dr. Roback in Boston he sold horoscopes and founded an astrological college. Then he moved into patent medicines and a bitters nostrum, selling his stomach bitters first from Philadelphia and later from Cincinnati where he died in 1867.

Although the dozen items shown here are just a few example of the risqué advertising from bitters manufacturers, they demonstrate the range of images chosen to intrigue and sell a customer.

Note: For anyone interested in seeing the images from my four posts on risque' images in whiskey advertising, they appeared in January 2011, July 2012, July 2013, and January 2017.

Certain industries seem to have made the paperweight a preferred method of marketing. Newspapers were among them, with two modes. One was a heavy metal bar that was given to newsstands to keep their papers from blowing away. The second, to be considered here, were smaller, lighter paperweights that carried an advertising message and meant for the general public.

Boston newspapers seem to have vied for attention most competitively. The Boston American chose for its weight to feature Mutt and Jeff, two popular cartoon characters created by Bud Fisher and running daily in the American. Begun in 1907, the strip ran nearly fifty years and was one of my favorites as a kid. The American was even older, having been founded as a tabloid in 1904. It became part of William Randolph Hearst’s chain of newspapers, eventually merged with other local sheets but the name disappeared in 1961.

The Boston Herald, founded in 1846 and still in circulation, is one of the oldest daily newspapers in America. Over its history it has received many awards including at least eight Pulitzer Prizes. The Herald chose to advertise through a paperweight and pocket mirror with a newsboy hawking the “New England’s greatest newspaper.” Initially a full-sized sheet, the paper converted to tabloid format in 1981.

Choosing to advertising its status as having the largest circulation in New England via the spacious belly of a cartoon character, the Boston Globe could boast at least 26 Pulitzers. Founded in 1872 it is locally owned and in 2016 had a circulation of 245,814, making it the 25th most read newspaper in America. Its investigative team was the basis of the 2015 motion picture, “Spotlight.”

Perhaps the most classy weight ever issued by a newspaper came from The New York Post, a newspaper that claims its origins in 1801 and Alexander Hamilton. It issued a crystal apple made by Tiffany & Company. It is etched in acid “New York Post, The Juice of the Apple.” The modern version of the paper is published in tabloid format and has been owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch since 1976. Just as Murdoch bears no resemblance to Hamilton, the Post has no resemblance to the respected paper of the past.

Another attractive contemporary glass etched paperweight is from the Baltimore Sun, another newspaper that has declined from past glory. The paper once was known for its overseas presence. At its height, the Sun ran eight foreign bureaus, giving rise to a 1983 ad that “The Sun never sets on the world.” Unfortunately those sunny days have since departed since the paper was bought by the Chicago Tribune. One by one those overseas bureaus closed and in recent years the Sun has declined in quality and readership.

The Cleveland News could trace its antecedents back to 1868, officially being founded in September 1905. Who Geo. E. Harper was, my research has failed to reveal. I assume he was a major figure on the staunchly Republican newspaper and decided to issue a paperweight. Always the third newspaper in Cleveland behind the Plain-Dealer and the Press, it suffered financially during the Great Depression and closed in 1960 when it was absorbed by the Cleveland Press.

Even smaller newspapers often issued weights. The New Haven Evening Register selected one of its front pages for its glass artifact. Founded in 1912, the Register is a daily owned by the Hearst interests that covers 19 cities and towns within New Haven and Middlesex Counties. Like other dailies, especially those published in the afternoon, this paper has suffered declines in circulation in recent years.

The paperweight shown here emphasizes the years in which its several newspapers were founded: The Intelligencer Journal in 1794, Lancaster New Era in 1877, and Sunday News in 1923. Unfortunately, none of them are currently extant. Instead the LNP Media Group owns and publishes LNP, a daily newspaper in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and several other local publications. It is controlled by a family, however, whose roots in local journalism go back to 1866.

The Herald-Palladium has had its current name only since 1975, it can trace its origins back to 1868 when the Palladium was established as a local weekly. It serves the twin cities of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, Michigan, towns that sit on opposite sides of the St. Joseph River as it flows toward Lake Michigan. After a dizzying series of mergers, acquisitions and name changes over the years, the current paper emerged in 1975. Its paperweight shows a light house on Lake Michigan.

Even U.S. weekly newspapers might issue paperweights. Shown here is an attractive item from the Cayuga Herald of Cayuga, a town of barely over 1,000 residents in Vermillion County, Indiana. This newspaper had a relatively short run, being founded in 1891 by one Charles E. Cook and out of business a decade later. This allows a much more precise dating of the weight, one that has a element of crudeness in its fashioning that renders it interesting as a glasshouse product.

The final paperweight carries an element of mystery about it. Was issued by a “Ledger” newspaper but there are at least six U.S. journals, past and present, that carry that name. It has an ad for Hires Root Beer, which dates from 1876 until today — no help at all. I have included the weight here because the delightful little girl is wearing a hat made from a newspaper. Head coverings similar to this one have been popular with printers since the 1700s. They would make a paper hat at the start of each day to keep grease, paint, paper lint, and oil out of their hair.

In featuring newspaper paperweights I have just included a dozen of the more interesting examples. Dozens more exist for the collector, providing a window into the history and development of the American newspaper.

In May 2015 I posted on this blog a series of humorous trade cards and postcards from Milwaukee sources, including breweries, that poked fun at its image as America’s “beer town.” In the intervening months I have collected an additional group of similar images that also deserve viewing.

The “Happy Days in Milwaukee” postcard provides an appropriate opening to the topic. Here we are looking at a vested gent who apparently is fishing while sucking on a beer keg floating beside his boat. He also has a bottle of beer within his reach behind the lawn chair in which he is reclining. The well-stuffed gent also appears to have caught a fish whose tail sticks up in the bow of the boat. Relaxation at its best.

The well-dress, top-hatted figure in the postcard above similar looks relaxed — or more likely drunk. He is a two-fisted drinker, with a stein of beer in either hand. The reference to Wurzburger flowing in Milwaukee is puzzling since it refers to a beer first brewed by a German bishop in 1643. Among the earliest German beers to be imported into the U.S., it was made only in Wurzburg, never in Milwaukee.

There follows the images of a stout burgher in a bowler hat drinking straight from the barrel, providing “One View of Milwaukee, according to the captions. This postcard came in more than one version with the colors of the drinker’s clothing changing while the basic concept did not.

“Touring Milwaukee” is a more subtle reminder of the many large breweries that once graced the city. The vehicle illustrated has a beer barrel with spigot as the engine and two open steins as the headlights. For good measure the driver has a third stein ready at hand. Two containers at the side are labeled with favorite Milwaukee foods — “sauerkraut” and “frankfurter.”

In an oblique reference to the increasing strength of prohibitionary forces, the card above alludes to the fact that brewery owners largely were German in origin. Milwaukee is “Breweryville” and the five characters at the end of rope apparently their owners who, if Wisconsin goes “dry”: “We Germans must hang together side by each.” A similar card from Heilman Brewery in LaCrosse, Wisconsin has a slightly different message: “If this town goes dry, us Germans will hang togeder.”

The Jung beer trade card is known to collectors as a “mechanical.” When issued it contained a white powder that flowed, if tilted, from the huge stein in the imbiber’s hand down to the pitcher being filled by the rosy cheeked barmaid. Philipp Jung was born in Germany in 1845 and immigrated to Milwaukee in 1870. After working in the Jacob Best Brewery and marrying his daughter, Jung broke away to found his own brewery in 1879. It became a rival to the Best Brewery and its successor beer-maker run by another Best son-in-law, Frederick Pabst.

If you like puns, then a card likely issued by Milwaukee’s Schlitz Brewery may tickle your funny bone. It takes advantage of a fashion statement begun at the turn of the 20th century when Paul Poiret revolutionized women's dress by introducing a skirt that was that was long and fitted but frequently featured a slit that revealed the wearer’s ankles. The proximity of “slits” to “Schlitz” seems to have overcome the good sense of the card designer, leading to the image shown here.

Sometimes the humor involved in Milwaukee beer-related ephemera seems unintended. Such is the “Pabst Everywhere” card that shows four construction workers, apparently on their lunch break, one of whom is drinking from a large vessel. The tag line is“Pabst-Milwaukee is enjoyed by the workingman.” Yet one is left wondering how steady on the job these midday drinkers will be after drinking their lunch.

The final example is an advertisement for a 1904 Pabst Calendar showing 12 children from a wide range of countries, each attached to a month. This calendar could be obtained from the Milwaukee brewery for ten cents in coin or stamps.

It is called a “stork calendar” and shows a large bird front and center, one that apparently has brought the tots. It occurs to me that a subliminal message is: “Drink beer and make babies.” But it just may be me.

The identification of Milwaukee with beer long since has faded into obscurity.

The Jung Brewery closed with National Prohibition. Schlitz sold out in 1982. Pabst is a holding company with a blizzard of brands, no longer headquartered in in Milwaukee but in Los Angeles. Only Miller remains of the major breweries that once identified the city as “beer town.” Yet remaining to us are these reminders of a day when Milwaukee gloried in the suds —and laughed about it as well.

The use of American Indian themes in selling a range of medicinals was common in the 19th and early 20th century. Native peoples were believed to have herbal and other cures beyond Western medicine. Not so in whiskey advertising and marketing. Perhaps discretion was suggested by the rampant alcoholism among Indians and their association with liquor often not deemed appropriate. Nevertheless, over at least a decade of looking, I have found a few examples where Native Americans were used in whiskey merchandizing.

My first examples are two whiskey jugs issued by Martindale & Johnson, a Philadelphia liquor house headed by Thomas Martindale, esteemed as a big game hunter and civic leader. Both jugs bear the name “Minnehaha - Laughing Waters,” the female heroine of the poem “Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The ceramic at left shows the Indian maiden sitting by a waterfall as if looking expectantly for her love. The jug at right apparently shows Hiawatha in a canoe shooting arrows at a fire-breathing sea dragon. The scene, by the way, has nothing to do with Longfellow’s poem.

The Indian brave made another appearance on whiskey jugs issued by George Benz & Sons of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, a German immigrant who specialized in packaging his whiskey in attractive containers. Hiawatha is shown against a background of wigwams, striding down a path with bow and arrows. He appears to have an Indian war club tucked in his tunic. The jug at right recently sold at auction for $332.

“Indian Hill” was a whiskey produced by William Cate of Knoxville, Tennessee. Not only did it bear a paper label showing Indians, embossed into the glass were the heads of two chiefs. Cate had a difficult time with prohibition forces, moving several times from state to state to avoid local or state restrictions on making or selling alcohol. This brand survived through the period of National Prohibition and was re-introduced by another distiller after Repeal.

The Indian maiden illustrated in “Tippecanoe,” a double fire copper whiskey from Union Distilling Company, a Cincinnati rectifying (blending) operation. For saloon signs, almost always displayed in places where women and children were excluded, the husky lass was shown barebreasted. When used on the label of a bottle that might find itself on a grocer’s shelf or a druggist’s display case where the eyes of the world might see, the maiden was more chastely dressed.

The man who produced the tray of the Indian brave hunting a buffalo was a larger-than-life character who called himself Andrew Madsen Smith, “The Wandering Dane,” and eventually settled in Minneapolis. Leaving Denmark as a boy his career took him to many adventures as a ship’s cook, a London street urchin, and then back to sea and, through jumping ship, into the clutches of Indians in the jungles of Brazil. He also had encountered Native Americans in the West during a period living in Utah.

“Red Chief Whiskey” was the product of another man whose life reads like a novel and who knew plenty about Indians. He was Jack Danciger, born in 1877 in Taos, New Mexico, His was only one of two non-Spanish, non-Indian families in the small town. His father ran a general store in Taos and owned a ranch outside town where he raised cattle. One story told about Jack is that at six years old he was kidnapped by a nearby Indian chief who was childless and wanted the boy as a son. When Jack’s whereabouts were discovered, his parents through careful negotiation were able to retrieve him.

The picture of the Indian princess, Pocahontas, as displayed on the letterhead of R. T. Dawson & Company of Baltimore does not inspire confidence that she appealed to John Alden. Her nose and chin seem woefully drawn on the Baltimore wholesale whiskey dealer’ letterhead from 1911. “Pocahontas Whiskey” appears to be Dawson’s only proprietary brand, trademarked by the company in 1907. My hope is that the bottle label carried a better image.

The final example is the label of a post-Prohibition whiskey called “Indian Trader,” from Frankfort Distilleries Inc. This was an outfit that originally came under the ownership of Paul Jones with a distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky, and offices in Louisville and Baltimore. The operation survived the period of National Prohibition by being licensed to sell “medicinal” whiskey, with its brands surviving into the 1940s when it was taken over by Seagrams.

Here they are, a dozen images of American Indians in whiskey advertising and merchandising that have taken years to collect. Looking them over, it is clear that when Native Americans were depicted, in virtually every case they were presented in heroic or at least dignified ways.

Yes, kids, there was a time before the advent of television when people stayed glued to a box that that had only sound — no sight. Those days were the apex of radio entertainment — the 1940s and into the 1950s. As a youngster I was addicted to listening, morning (when not in school), evenings and weekends. Reading a list of programs from that era, I am struck by how many were tuned to my dial. From them, however, I have winnowed a list of just four for which I have a special fondness.

The first is The Shadow,a character adapted from a pulp magazine that first aired with a half hour on CBS in 1937. It was my favorite show and still is. The Shadow was characterized as having traveled through East Asia and learned "the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him." As in the magazine stories, The Shadow was not given the literal ability to become invisible. The introduction to the program sent chills through me — and still does as the character intones: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” It was followed by haunting laugh.

On the radio The Shadow assumed the visual identity of Lamont Cranston, described as “a wealthy young man-about-town” who every week found himself emeshed in a crime, one often imperiling his girlfriend, “the lovely and talented” Margo Lane.” She was the only person to know the crime-fighter’s real identity. What the pair and The Shadow actually looked like was meant for our imaginations. As depicted in the pulps The Shadow wore a wide-brimmed black hat and a black, crimson-lined cloak with an upturned collar over a standard black business suit. Later a crimson scarf was added.

At the outset, The Shadow was played by Orson Welles, one of the most famous actors and directors of American history, shown here in a radio spot promo. Although another actor intoned the introduction, Wells provided the stirring conclusion. At the end of each episode The Shadow reminded listeners that, "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay...The Shadow knows!" That message got across to a young mind forcefully. Welles left the program in 1838 and a succession of Shadow voices followed until December 26, 1854, when the program left the air.

My second choice, something completely different, was “Fibber McGee and Molly,” a situation comedy that ran from 1935 to 1936 on NBC. It followed the adventures of a working-class couple, the habitual storyteller Fibber McGee and his sometimes exasperated but always loving wife Molly, living among their numerous neighbors and acquaintances in the community of Wistful Vista. The program as I recall aired on Tuesday nights after my bedtime on a school night. But my parents thoughtfully allowed a radio in the bedroom with instructions to turn it off as soon as the program ended.

The characters were created and portrayed by Jim and Marian Jordan, a real-life husband and wife team that had been working in radio since the 1920s. Because of a clamor from fans to be able to see the personalities behind the disembodied radio voices, Fibber McGee and Mollie portrayed their characters in four motion pictures, often starring another favorite, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Athough the films were somewhat creaky by today’s standards, I eagerly await each of them.

Looking back, it may have been the fact that the McGees were Irish and my family was Irish. More likely, however, it were the running gags. For example, when Fibber tells a bad joke, Molly often answers, “Tain’t funny, McGee,” which became a catch-phrase of the times. Perhaps the show’s most enduring stroke was Fibber’s closet. It involved someone, usually McGee opening a hall closet with the contents clattering down and out and, often enough, over McGee's or Molly's heads. "I gotta get that closet cleaned out one of these days" was the usual McGee observation once the racket subsided. It never failed to get a laugh from the studio audience (no laugh track in those days) and those of us at home.

Among the many after-school radio programs aimed a young crowd — “Jack Armstrong,” “Dick Tracy,” “Green Hornet” — my favorite was “The Lone Ranger.” It aired for a half hour on ABC at 7:30 p.m., after dinner but before homework and bedtime. I always thrilled to the opening:“In the early days of the western United States, a masked man and an Indian rode the plains, searching for truth and justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!”

The Lone Ranger was named so because the character was the only survivor of a group of six Texas Rangers. A posse of six rangers while pursuing a band of outlaws, is betrayed by a civilian guide and ambushed in a canyon. Later, an Indian named Tonto stumbles onto the scene and discovers one ranger is barely alive, and he nurses the man back to health. To disguise his identity, the ranger — dubbed The Lone Ranger by Tonto — dons a black mask. The Lone Ranger’s horse was named Silver; Tonto rode Scout. According to the program introduction, the two men “led the fight for law and order in the early western United States! Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice!”

In reality, the program was a well-scrubbed Old West. The Lone Ranger always spoke with perfect grammar and without any slang. When forced to use guns, he never shot to kill but tried to disarm his antagonists. No scene ever occurred inside a saloon only "restaurants." Nonetheless, this youngster thrilled each night to hear “Hi Ho Silver, the Lone Ranger Rides Again.”

My last selection may seem odd for a youngster, but it is “Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club,” a morning variety show out of Chicago on ABC radio for more than 35 years. While later it would have some personal ties, when I was a kid it was entertainment when I was home sick. It was my fate to come down with virtually every childhood disease known to medicine including measles, mumps, chicken pox and scarlet fever. Top it off with viral pneumonia as an eighth grader and I spent a lot of time with morning radio.

McNeill, shown here, presented a program that combined music with informal talk and jokes often based on topical events, usually ad-libbed. In addition to recurring comedy performers, vocal groups and soloists, listeners heard sentimental verse and a musical “March Around the Breakfast Table.” He is credited with being the first performer to make morning talk and variety — now a staple of TV — a viable format. I was an avid listener. Perhaps too avid. Asked to prepare the eighth grade graduation skit, I came up with the dialogue modeled on the show that the nuns thought too “adult” and nixed it.

To the personal. For a long time McNeill was the most famous graduate of the Marquette University College of Journalism, where I went to school, and a friend of its longtime Dean Jeremiah O’Sullivan. Later in life the O’Sullivan introduced us and I could tell McNeill that while he had married one of the Dean’s early secretaries, I had married his last. The final Breakfast Club was taped in December 1968. McNeill retired from broadcasting and public life, dying seven years later.

There are a number of other radio shows of that era that I might have mentioned — “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Jack Benny,” “Lorenzo Jones and His Wife Belle,” “Bob and Ray,” and the list could go on. But these four shows mark for me the “crucial corners” of that talking box we called radio. Those, indeed, were the days.

In March of this year at a Philadelphia convocation of distillers, many of them running boutique distilleries, I spoke on the history of whiskey-making in Pennsylvania. Subsequently my attention has been drawn increasingly into understanding the nature and extent of that industry in the Keystone State. This has focussed me on stories behind the Pennsylvania items in my whiskey paperweight collection. Shown here are nine weights, with details on the four companies of their origins.

Phillip H. Hamburger, a German Jewish immigrant, was not the first distiller to conflate Pennsylvania whiskey with the Monongahela River that flows through the Keystone State. That waterway had been identified with strong drink since the 18th Century. But Hamburger made the Monongahela the centerpiece of his merchandising and his rye whiskey was, as a writer recorded in 1904, “not only known from ocean to ocean, but in every civilized country on the globe.”

Beginning as a liquor wholesaler, Hamburger moved gradually into distilling, initially through an investing lin a primitive distillery at Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela River owned by George W. Jones. After Jones died, Hamburger took it over, changing the name to the Ph. Hamburger Co. Once he had achieved full ownership, Hamburger moved ahead boldly to expand his facilities and his market. He built significantly onto the original plant and warehouses. A contemporary publication reported: “The Hamburger Distillery, Limited, is one of the largest plants of the kind in the world, covering about fourteen acres of ground.”

Hamburger marketed his brands extensively in newspapers and magazines. He featured three brands, all advertised on paperweights here. In addition to “G.W. Jones Monongahela Rye,” both “Bridgeport Pure Rye” and “Bridgeport Pure Malt” boasted the Monongahela origin on their labels. All three acquired a national and even international customer base. In 1914, Hamburger’s whiskey won a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Nottingham, England, and again in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco. During his lifetime Hamburger had been an important force for make Pennsylvania rye whiskey recognized worldwide.

Beginning his career as a baker, John Dougherty, an Irish Catholic immigrant, soon moved into distilling, opening his own whiskey-making facility in 1849. Dougherty’s “Pure Rye Whiskey” met with almost immediate success, capturing a market in the Philadelphia area and beyond. The company’s first still was a wooden one of 750 gallons. It soon was joined by a second copper still with a 1,200 gallon capacity. Both were fueled by steam. A new larger warehouse was built in 1864, with a capacity of 3,000 barrels.

In 1866 John Dougherty died at the age of 78. Son William took over as senior manager and the company name was changed to J.A. Dougherty’s Sons. The business continued to grow. Three new warehouses were built over the next several years adding 12,900 gallons of storage capacity. The complex employed some 30 workers. In 1879 the first warehouse was enlarged to hold 4,000 barrels. Year after year the fame of Dougherty whiskey grew.

At the age of 67 William died in 1892 at his residence in Philadelphia, leaving his brother Charles as the manager of the firm. The youngest Dougherty son continued the successes forged by his father and brother. He discarded the wooden still in favor of a second copper pot and in 1893 rebuilt one warehouse to hold 3,800 barrels and added new floors to another to increase capacity to 25,000 barrels. The continued expansion was indicative of a growing national market for Dougherty Pure Rye.

In contrast to Hamburger and Dougherty, William C. Wilkinson was born in Philadelphia and of old Pennsylvania stock. Originally a partner in a local wholesale liquor house, when the partner died in 1893, Wilkinson bought the entire business and changed the name to his own. His flagship brand was “Stylus Club.” Philadelphia’s Stylus Club was an organization restricted to editors, reporters, publishers and other contributors to local newspapers and magazine. Founded in 1877, it was largely a social gathering where, it has beenspeculated, a fair amount of drinking went on.

Not a distiller, Wilkinson represented a growing element within the industry, that of a wholesale liquor dealer selling whiskey under his own proprietary brand. He might be buying whiskey from a Pennsylvania distillery and bottling it as it came, or mixing several whiskeys, sometimes adding other ingredients, in his own facility. This process was known as “rectifying.” Frequently rectifiers would trademark these brands, as Wilkinson did with “Stylus Club” in 1891.

A variation on that model was practiced by the Flemings, part of a prominent Irish family of Pittsburgh druggists. Under the name, Jos. Fleming & Son, Joseph and his son George, turned a drug store rectifying operation into a national whiskey powerhouse. Doing business from its single location at Market and Diamond Streets, the company advertised “Fleming’s Export Rye Whiskey” and “Fleming’s Malt Whiskey” across America. Bottles similar to those shown on the paperweights here have been found all across the country, including one recently discovered in a Sacramento, California, state park.

As druggists, the Flemings shaped their advertising to emphasize the medicinal benefits of whiskey. Their ads are redolent with statements like “physicians should recommend…” and “physicians prescribe….” As prohibitionary forces closed in, such medical claims became the best refuge for many Pennsylvania whiskey purveyors, the majority not druggists.

Joseph Fleming died in 1890 and son George at a relatively young 51 in 1912. Shortly thereafter other family members sold the business and the whiskey brands to a local pharmacist who continued to operate the business under the Fleming name until the imposition of National Prohibition in 1920.

None of the four liquor establishments featured here survived the 14 “dry” years until Repeal in 1934. Their histories and those of dozens of other pre-Prohibition Pennsylvania distilleries and liquor houses document the growth of the state’s whiskey industry from small farmstead stills to companies with a national marketing reach. The paperweights they issued serve as a reminder of that dynamic era.

This is the fifth in the series of posts that feature the type of female images that often accompanied whiskey and other liquor advertising. Because women — respectable women, that is — frequently were barred from the interior of drinking establishments, depictions of women in suggestive poses or nude were frequently on display on saloon walls or other barroom accoutrements. The liquor sponsors seemingly believed that the more sophisticated and artistic their images appeared, the more comfortable their male audience might feel ogling them.

The Tioga Rye ad epitomizes the effort at sophistication. The gent in top hat and evening attire probably was way overdressed for the clientele of the saloon where this image might have been displayed. The liquor house behind the image, Raphael & Zeugschmidt, existed under various names in Pittsburgh from 1886 - 1918, an impressive run of thirty-two years. In addition to Tioga Rye, the proprietors also featured “Popular Price Rye.”

Another elegant image is projected by the El-Bart Dry Gin saloon sign of a young woman looking wanton by the seaside. This brand was from an aristocratic Maryland family, the Goldsboroughs. The two Charles Goldsborough, father and son, did not rise to the apex of the Maryland business and social world merely because of blood lines, however, but because they made good liquor and scads of money selling it. Their Wilson-El Bart distillery was a large complex of three buildings on 3.43 acres in Baltimore totaling 80,000 square feet.

The four images that follow here are from a booklet entitled “Famous Paintings…Funny Stories” that would have been given to the retail customers of I. Trager & Co., a Cincinnati liquor wholesaler whose proprietary brands included “Cream of Old Kentucky,” advertised throughout the text.

The allusion to “famous paintings” on the four nudes depicted in the booklet is something of a stretch. The “A. F. Lejune" referenced on the one above is Adolphe Frederic Lejune, a French artist who was active roughly between 1879 and 1912. He was what was known as a “salon painter,” providing images that were very traditional in their appearance. I have been able to find nothing about the artist “Louis Perrey,” responsible for “Diana,” a familiar figure on many whiskey-related advertising, always with a bow and arrow.

Nor are there clues to “Lerch,” the artist who painted the “Will of the Wisp.” By contrast the artist of “Idyl” was George Papperitz, a German painter, sculptor and poet who was born in Dresden in 1846 and died in Munch in 1918. You will note that none of these artist was truly famous. Their inclusion was only because of their nudes.

Cincinnati whiskey men seemed particularly keen on nudes in their advertising. H. F. Corbin provided his saloon customers with the wall sign shown here. By seeming to be “classical” in its subject matter, such images were deemed more acceptable to the public. The proprietor could be admired for his taste in art and the presence of frontal nudity was merely an accident. The Corbin firm was founded in 1895 and went out of business in 1918 after Ohio voted statewide prohibition.

The nudes shown in the Gibson Pure Old Rye ad clearly are modeled on the salon-style women in the buff. They are floating in various poses as a background for a bottle of Pennsylvania whiskey. John Gibson was an immigrant from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who began distilling about 1840. He ran a successful liquor business in Philadelphia but in 1856 built a new facility just to the south of Pittsburgh on the east side of the Monongahela river that he called the Gibsonton Mills Distillery. From there the brand rapidly gained a national reputation.

Strictly speaking, the following female figure does not represent whiskey but “Gocce D’ro,” sold as a cordial by W. P. Bernagozzi Co., who cited the Pure Foods and Drugs Act in connection with their beverage. This may not have been a wise move. In 1919 William P. and Ferdinand Bernagozzi were fined $100 after pleading guilty to misbranding containers of olive oil that they shipped from New York to Connecticut in violation of that same 1906 act.

The next nude image is found on a celluloid pocket mirror issued by Frank Woodruff, the generous proprietor of the Normandy Saloon in Coldwater, Michigan. Note that Woodruff not only gave away this trinket but it was good for 10 cents in trade at his bar. The figure is in a highly unusual pose. She apparently is nude but with drapery on both shoulders and a strip of cloth down the front, hiding her nether parts.

The final exhibit is a saloon sign “par excellence.” It has all the classical attributes of a salon painting with the raw licentiousness that would make the clients of Albert Hertz of Gloversville, New York, anxious to hang on their walls. Hertz was a dealer in liquor and wine in the pre-Prohibition era. The sign is believed to date from around 1905.

There they are, ten women in all their loveliness, some clothed, most not so.They appeared on a range of advertising items, from pocket mirrors to saloon signs — all with a single purpose: To catch the eye of the (male) beholder and sell him whiskey.

Note: For anyone interested in the earlier iterations of “risque’ whiskey” posts, they can be found in this blog in January 2011, July 2012, July 2013, and January 2016.

In this post, the third on brewery trade cards devoted to opera and the theater, the focus is on Adolphus Busch, the businessman behind Anheuser Busch Brewery of St. Louis and Budweiser beer. While clearly a fan of opera, Busch — shown here on a beer stein — was not above poking fun at the stories while marketing his beer.

The first card here, for example, is a scene from the opera Siegfried by Richard Wagner. The hero, Siegfried tangles with a fearsome dragon named Fafner and with the help of an enchanted sword, slays him. In the beer version, Fafner asks the young man “who stirred up thy childish mind to the murderous deed?” Siegfried replies that“…T’was Anhauser Beer that gave me courage.”

“The Chimes of Normandy” was the English translation of a French comic opera in three acts composed by Robert Planquette with a libretto from a play by Charles Gabet. The third act is a mishmash of mistaken identities that ends happily for all concerned. Busch’s trade card would appear to have little to do with the actual text.

Spelled incorrectly on the card as “Fiesco,” the actual title of this French opera is “Fiesque” or “The Genoese Conspiracy.” By composer Edouard Lalo with libretto by Charles Beauquier, the piece comes to a tragic ending with a friend killing a friend. The character shown on the card, Gianettino, is the ruler of Genoa. He declares himself of good humor and wants it published that “everyone may enjoy himself and drink Anhauser Beer.”

The next card, “Nanon” is something of a puzzle since I can find no opera or theater piece that corresponds to it. An opera called “Manon” is frequently performed but there is no character named “Anna” in it. The picture is of a cavalry solder and minstrel wooing a young tavern wench named Anna. Most interesting, while hold her hand with his left hand, he is pouring a beer with his right and missing the glass badly. He intones: “Anna, for Anheuser Beer I sing my praise, I love it as I do thee all my days.” The back of these cards usually depicted a bottle of the beer.

Tony Faust was a well known St. Louis restauranteur who not only was a great friend of Adolphus, but married his daughter. Busch is said to have had lunch most days at Faust’s eatery, but reportedly drank wine, disdaining his own beer. Because of their closeness, Adolphus named a beer for him, advertising it in multiple ways related to the Faust legend. Naturally opera cards would be among the advertisements.

The card at left is from the first act of Gounod’s opera in which the aging Faust has been tempted to sell his soul to the devil Méphistophélès in return for restored youth. Rather than drinking the devil’s elixir, Faust has his hand on a glass of Tony Faust Beer, but it still trembles in his grasp. The Faust card a right is from the opera’s second act when Mephistopheles in the guise of a soldier is in a tavern regaling a group of soldiers and flirting with the barmaids.

While earlier trade cards extolled Anhauser and Tony Faust beers, the card celebrating “Stradella” specifically mentions Budweiser. Stradella was a melodramatic grand opera in five acts composed by Louis Niedermeyer. It premiered at the Paris Opera in March 1837. The card presumably shows the hero, Stradella, with the heroine, Leonor, somewhere in Italy contemplating a glass of Budweiser Beer and bears little or no resemblance to the opera dialogue.

Although Adolphus Busch set the standard for issuing opera-related trade cards, he was not the only brewer. In Louisville, Kentucky, the Schaefer-Meyer Brewing Co., as illustrated above, knew a good promotion when they saw one and set about to replicate the marketing ploy. They selected “La Belle Helene” as their target, a farce based on the story of Helen of Troy. In effect Schaefer-Meyer were spoofing a spoof. In their version, Paris is holding out a goblet of company beer to one of three scantily dressed women and speaking to an offstage “Calchas,” a high priest of Venus. None of it makes a lot of sense but the picture has its own appeal.

Note: For anyone interested in opera and theater trade cards, I have devoted two prior posts to the subject, “Budweiser Goes to the Opera,” April 13, 2013, and “Off to the Opera on the Wings of Commerce,” October 24, 2014. The beer stein bearing the likeness of Adolphus Busch recently sold at an online auction for $2,125.00.

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