Come on over and take a break from the hustle and bustle of the holidays, and join the KC Matchgirl at the fireside for a chat.
While we relax and enjoy the warmth of the flickering flames and gaze at the towering pine festooned with baubles and beads, I will tell you a story of a Christmas matchbook from long ago...
It all began with a little girl who was charmed by the cozy fireside scene on the cover and the size of it. She had never seen a matchbook so big and it held 10 large wooden matchsticks. Her father had gotten it from the bank and yes, she could have it once the adults had the chance to use all the matches inside. One by one, the matches were used and the little girl got her prize- an empty matchbook to add to her growing collection. And when she grew up, she became the KC Matchgirl. The End.
Anyway, this giant matchbook is 4 times the size of a regular matchbook. The fact that it contained wooden matches probably meant they could be used to light a fireplace, such as pictured on the cover, but alas, our home did not have one. Despite the traditional American scene on the cover, this giant was actually Made In Italy. Inside, the imprint reads "Compliments of North Kansas City State Bank". Also known as Norbank- "Let Norbank Be Your Bank", it was located in what we called downtown Northtown. Since it's Christmas time and you've got a lot to do, I'll not delve into explaining Kansas City geography. It's so cozy here I'll just put another log on the fire and stay a while longer. Thanks for stopping by!
Time frame: 1970
Matchbook dimensions: 3 1/4 X 4 1/4 inches
Business information: Norbank, 401 Armour Rd., North Kansas City, MO. Currently a Country Club Bank branch location.
There's a "Sure Sign of Fine Service" in Leavenworth, Kansas according to this deluxe matchbook. At least there was until this Mid-Century Googie-style sign was considered outdated and Leavenworth Mutual Savings & Loan Association changed their logo and sign.
The turquoise "pinched rectangle" topped with a golden starburst reigned at 4 locations, printed on an inside listing- 2 in Leavenworth proper and also nearby Tonganoxie and Oskaloosa. With 2 branches not located in Leavenworth, the name was eventually changed to Mutual Savings Association, with a new logo and signs.
MSA (as they currently refer to their business) has since added locations in Eudora and Bonner Springs and updated their logo yet again in 2012. This year the business is celebrating a 125th anniversary. As posted on Mutual's Facebook page, the festivities included attaching balloons to the clunky-people statues in front of the main branch building and a sheet cake with the newest logo copied in icing. (This seems to the KC Matchgirl pretty low-key for celebrating 125 years...)
Founded on April 11, 1888 as the Leavenworth Mutual Building, Loaning and Savings Association, it's easy to see why the name gets shorter with each consecutive logo/sign update.
Timeframe: mid-1970's
Address: 100 S. 4th, Leavenworth, KS
The KC Matchgirl is a vicarious armchair traveler- she goes where the matchbook takes her. Via this classy gold foil matchbook, this time she's ended up at Jorgenson's, located in the capital city of Helena, Montana.
As viewed in the illustration, this Mid-Century Modern restaurant & lounge has a mountain range looming just beyond their back door. In actuality, the Rocky Mountains loom farther down the road, but the closet peak, Mt. Helena, is highly visible from the restaurant's new patio.
Built in 1958 by Danish immigrant Fred Jorgenson and his grown children, the restaurant has been remodeled to even more modern standards- and amazingly- is still in business under the same name, operated by the 3rd and 4th generations of Jorgensons. The Holiday Inn that gets front cover billing is not the same as the chain of motels that claims to be "The World's Innkeeper". The motel was standing when the Jorgensons chose that location for their restaurant; later they purchased the 37 unit operation and expanded it to create 102 units.
Fred Jorgenson had already retired from a career in restaurant cooking that began when he arrived in Helena in 1912. After a brief one-year retirement, he joined with his children and their spouses to begin a successful catering operation in 1951, which they sold a few years later to settle into their own restaurant. After 3 decades, they sold both the motel and restaurant, but the new owners kept the family's name on the signage and convinced the Jorgenson offspring to return to the restaurant.
Located just 6 blocks from the Montana state capitol building, Jorgenson's Inn & Suites is at 1714 11th Avenue.
Matchbook date: early 1970's
The KC Matchgirl was born and raised in the big city, but she has plenty of kinfolk that live out yonder, along a distant country road. And when you need gas, something cold to drink, a fresh, hot pizza- or just a clean restroom- you pull into a Casey's.
A common sight across the American midwest, a Casey's General Store is most often found in rural towns with populations less than 5,000. With 1,700 locations in 12 states, Casey's founder Donald Lamberti (you notice his name is not Casey), started his first general store in 1959. Located in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, it operated as an old country store until 1968 when the building was remodeled as a convenience store. Soon after, a friend convinced him to purchase the Square Deal Oil Co. in Boone, IA and Lamberti decided to name his new business after that friend, K.C. Fish. (No relation to the KC Matchgirl.)
The new store was so successful they kept adding locations, again in small towns where the "Mom & Pop" stores were starting to close their doors, and a marketing plan was born.
Despite the "general store" moniker, Casey's has never been old-fashioned. In most cases, Casey's is the most modern business located within those small town limits, providing jobs and freshly baked items like doughnuts and pizza. (KC Matchgirl has found Casey's pizza to be okey-dokey!)
And the modern Casey's General is not only found in small towns anymore, they're creeping into the suburbs; there are even 2 locations with Kansas City addresses. Big City customers are likely to do a double-take someday when they spot a Casey's way out yonder on a country road.
Compare the late 1970's matchbook to one from 2013.
It is a little known fact, at this point, that the KC Matchgirl was once fluent in Spanish. Once, as in, when I studied the language in my formative years, to the extent that I was awarded "membership" in the Spanish Honor Society. While I would hardly consider myself fluent today, I could read the name on this matchbook that hails from Mexico.
Featuring a scenic view with a reflection of a building, palm trees, festive colored lights, the spray of a fountain, I surmised that Del Lago (The Lake) must be a resort. In this age of search engines, all I have to do is type in "Del Lago resort" and it takes me to a resort of the same name- in Maine. (What?)
Looking inside this deluxe matchbook (40 matches) the next clue is "nuevo bosque de Chapultepec", of which I can only translate 2 out of 4 words. But I know Chapultepec is a place name, so I type that into the search engine and Bing! (I actually used Yahoo) After some scrolling and clicking, I found an image that matches the lake, the fountain, and a building.
Bosque de Chapultepec is a huge park in Mexico City that dates back to the early 1900's. The nuevo (new) Chapultepec was created in 1964, with a larger lake, the Monumental Fountain, and several lakeside restaurants.
Did I mention that Chapultepec was huge? There are 3 lakes, a zoo, museums, an amusement park- and Del Lago! Which is actually a restaurant, not a resort.
But, somehow the building was not exactly the one pictured on the matchbook, even though the phone number is the same. Current photos seemed to show a larger, more modern building- could it be that Del Lago had been remodeled?
Alas, one can not find everything on the internet, or in English either. But a Flickr search turned up a photo merely captioned "Mexico City 1968" that showed a blurry Del Lago in the background behind some canoers on the lake, matching the building on the matchbook.
Since the change in its overall appearance, the restaurant is now named El Lago and is known for its international cuisine. There is a lovely view of the lake and fountain from the tall, angled windows.
Time travel with me, the KC Matchgirl, as we head down I-70 east to St. Louis to check-in at Stouffer's Riverfront Inn.
If you're thinking "Would that be the same Stouffer's that makes frozen entrees like I have in my refrigerator freezer?", then you would be correct! While the St. Louis location for this Stouffer's Motor Inn wasn't built until 1968, the Stouffer family began their first restaurant operation in 1922. By 1924, a young Vernon Stouffer joined his parents at their small Cleveland business and grew it into a corporation by 1929. Customers loved the meals so much they began asking for frozen versions to take home in 1946. By the 1950's factories took over the packaging of the meals, making them available at grocer's instead of only the restaurants. Stouffer entered the hospitality business in 1960 when he purchased a motel in Florida. By the time this matchbook was printed, the motel chain had nine locations, all featuring Stouffer's fine-dining restaurants. Stouffer sold all his holdings to the Nestle Corporation in 1973, including the well-recognized Stouffer name.
The Stouffer's Motor Inn in downtown St. Louis featured a 28-story tower with impressive views of both Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch. In 1974, Nestle added an 11-story tower to the building and renamed it the Riverfront Towers. When Nestle sold the hotel division, it was renamed the Regal Riverfront. In 1999, it became the popular Millennium Hotel and remains so today. The revolving restaurant on the 28th floor has retained the name given to it by Vernon Stouffer, the Top of the Riverfront.
Location: 200 S. 4th Street, St. Louis, Missouri
Matchbook Timeframe: early 1970's
And he used wax matches. Which are tiny (1 1/8 inches) and made (in this case) in Italy, and not like the typical wooden matchbox matches we use in America. You see, the splints (sticks) are made of wax blended with tissue paper, which makes them damp-proof and thus more useful than wooden matches.
This seemingly boring-looking box is actually quite interesting. Following the clues, we find the box itself is made in America- New York to be exact- then filled with the Italian wax matches. There were 60 at one time, and they lay in the box vertically. A typical matchbox of this size holds 32 wooden matches laying horizontally.
Additionally, this box has a mechanism, which was broken when I recently got it- it's just a cardboard box and these things do happen! But this is how it would work if it did: pull the tab of the inside box, as it slides out, a rubber band attached to the outside cover opens a flap to reveal the matches. The flap closes as the inner box is pushed back in.
The Butler logo is indeed the same company that manufactures the popular metal buildings that are commonly called "Butler Buildings". The company started in 1901 when Charles Butler wanted to invest in a galvanized stock tank created by Emanuel Norquist. They added grain bins in 1907 and metal buildings in 1909. In 2004, the company was purchased by an Australian firm, Blue Scope Steel.
The small print above the logo reads, "Celebrating 60 Years". Doing the simple math using the year 1901 + 60 years, the date for this matchbox would be 1961. And despite the box's appearance, the matches look brand new, and still light with a single strike on the worn striker.
That's such a great line from the movie "Apollo 13". I just had to use it for this NASA matchbook, from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Since its creation in 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has used 3 logos. The first one, which is round and very detailed with space-related icons has come to be known as the "meatball". The next, a Logotype of stylized letters, is the one we find on this matchbook. Designed in 1975 by the graphic-design team of Dunne & Blackburn, it was recognized with an "Award of Design Excellence", a Presidential Design Award, in 1984. (The awards were created by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, thus the time difference between the creation of logo and the subsequent award.) Due to the smooth lines that depict the letters, this design has been referred to as "the worm".
Despite winning an award, the use of the worm logo only lasted 17 years and was replaced by...the original meatball, in 1992. This was to invoke memories of the successful Apollo missions, when we landed on the moon- except for Apollo 13.
Whew! It would seem that there's still a problem- the KC Matchgirl, for one, was not really aware that NASA had been switching logos back and forth.
But it does give some good clues for dating this matchbook. Newer than 1975, but older than 1992, which puts the date vaguely into the 1980's.
The space center itself was built in 1963 as the Manned Spacecraft Center and was renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973, for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Most likely this matchbook would have been available at a visitor's center or gift shop, not from the pocket of an actual astronaut.
The text on the cover of this matchbook sums up the reason philluminists do what they do. A philluminist does what, you ask? Collect matchbooks is the simple way to put it, but it is rather cool that there's a technical name for this hobby, just as there is for stamp or coin collectors. If you want to know the technical name for stamp or coin collectors, you're on your own because this blog is only about matchbooks.
This matchcover seems to be a product of the shocking 1970's, when it might have been slightly okay to use the name "Hell", because after all if movie stars could say it on the big silver screen, there's no reason you couldn't print it on a matchbook. Also, it has a front striker, which means it would have been made before 1973, when they started to make back strikers for safety reasons.
But back to the text and the reason I collect. Matchcovers are purveyors of information, mostly where it came from; the place, the location, the address. They're like a tiny billboard you could put in your pocket or purse. A high-class business could show off 'look where I've been', with an air of prestige. A low-class dive would have the opposite effect, but with collecting, the high and low classes of matchbooks get treated the same- as mementos of places that may no longer exist.
Inside the cover, there is sometimes more information. In this offering, that's where you find the reminder for the question, "Where the hell did I get this?" Why, the Lakeview Motor Lodge, Restaurant & Lounge, that's where! Located in Trenton, Missouri, this motor lodge is still doing business near the intersection of Hiway 6 and US 65. While Lakeview sounds like a generic name for a small mid-western motel, maps indicate that there is a large lake in Trenton (Trenton Lake) that could possibly be viewed from the motel parking lot. That's the one thing this cover doesn't tell us, so the ? is more than appropriate.
