Dutch Stereotype

Back in about 1910, cards that provided a humorous stereotypical view of Dutch (and sometimes Germans) were very popular. As far as I can tell, the humor was well intended. These cards were all sent to  Cora Huffsmith  of Dushore, Pennsylvania.  According to Conover Genealogy,  Cora Huffsmith, born in Pennsylvania in 1891, was the 8th great-granddaughter of Wolphert Gerretse Van Kouwenhoven, a baker from Utrecht, Netherlands.  Friends and family must have sent her these cards because of her Dutch heritage.

Here are ze backs of de cards in ze same order:

Peery's Dead Shot Vermifuge

This is a trade card advertising Wright's various preparations, including McMunn's Elixir of Opium and Peery's Dead Shot Vermifuge. And then there's Crossman's Specific Mixture, which sounds particularly vague.

On the front of the card, for your amusement, is a puzzle. Try this before and after applying the Roman Eye Balsam to see if there's a difference.

Webster's Cut Rate Drug Store was located on Court Street in Binghamton, New York. Here's a card showing Court Street about 25 years after the trade card was printed.

The signs are hard to make out, so it's difficult to know exactly where Webster's would have been on this card.
Here's the back of the card, sent to Miss Margaret Sipe from Miss Clara Abbott in 1908.

Flowers as a Symbol of Friendship - or not

How lovely to present some delicate pansies as a gesture of friendship.

But I'm not sure how a friend would take it if I offered her one of these flowers out of my garden. This is Dranunculus Vulgaris, also known as a Voodoo Lily  (incorrectly, I think) and Dragon Arum - and, yes, it is as huge as it looks.  The bloom is several feet long.

These things grow on the side of my house, where, despite all of my efforts, they are tremendously happy. Let me just clarify that I did not plant these. They came with the house. The previous owner died, and while I can't blame it on these flowers, if she had been teetering on the edge they may just have pushed her over.

Oh, but they're so uh lovely! Yes, and like other plants, they need to be pollinated. But unlike most other plants, these are pollinated by flies not bees.  And in order to attract flies, it helps if you smell bad. In fact, if you can manage to smell like week-old roadkill, then you can greatly increase your chances of successful pollination. And that is exactly what these flowers smell like. It is not a faint smell either, it is an evil cloud that wafts and drifts.

This plant has another odd quality, which is that the smell only lasts for one day. After that you can cut them and put them in a vase in your house with no trace of odor. Often I cut them down before that, so that the mailman doesn't contact the police about rotting corpses. This year we endured the smell so that my neighbor could cut them down and give them to a friend - as a symbol of friendship I suppose.

Oh, if you're still here, this is the back of the lovely pansy card.