Milo and Maude

Maude sent this card to Milo, with an information-rich message about rubbers, cuffs, and watches. I like messages like this that transcend the usual "I am well. Hope you are well too. Please write soon." Thank you, Maude!

Here's the front of the card - very bucolic.

Here's the back of the card, which is really more interesting.

Maude Pope sent this card to Milo L. Mack in 1909.  I love messages like this, and I think I would have liked Maude if I had met her:

Dear friend Milo - I will send you a card did you catch the car last night you forgot your rubbers- did you tell your mother I wouldn't let you come home. Well Milo - I took your cuff buttons down, and they said they couldn't exchange them now but they would have changed them if I had brought them in before Xmas: so I had them marked. I was awful sorry I couldn't change them and get a watch fob, but I couldn't so you can save them to look at anyway. I had a letter from Charlie and he wants me to come up but I am not going so will say Good Night from your true friend Maude

I have just wound my watch

So, who were Maude and Milo? I thought of posting this card about a year ago and couldn't find anything, so I left it alone. I read it again this week and thought I'd check one more time. If it hadn't been for an obituary, I would have been in the same place as last year. The obituary I found was for Elizabeth J. Seeloff Eaton, born May 5, 1918. Sadly, she died just last week, on December 28, 2011. She was the daughter of Milo Lee Mack and Maude Pope Mack. Although I was sad to hear about Elizabeth's death, I was somehow elated to hear that Maude and Milo married and had children. True friend, indeed! The card was sent in 1909, so sometime between then and about 1914 they got married. They had a son named Milo Jr. in 1915 and the daughter, Elizabeth, in 1918.

The 1920 Census shows John employed as a shoe packer in a shoe factory. That also brings a smile to my face. The address on the card was Lestershire, New York, a village that no longer exists, since it was renamed Johnson City in 1916. Johnson City (near Binghamton, New York) was the home of the Endicott Johnson Shoe Factory, reported by many to be a great place to work. Not only that, but Milo worked there at the same time as my mother-in-law's parents. They may well have known each other.
Check out this earlier post on the Endicott Johnson Shoe Factory.

Vasagatan - Stockholm Sweden

Here's a card showing Vasa street or Vasagatan in Stockholm, Sweden around 1900. It is now a very busy street with lots of traffic.

Eventually, Vasagatan becomes Vasabron (Vasa Bridge), when it crosses the Norrström, as you can see in this more recent postcard. If you look closely, you can see a tram on the bridge. I love this card because of the mysterious barrel floating in the water. Parliament is nearby...is there a politician inside?

Here are the backs of the cards in the same order.

The Lobster, Oyster and Chop House - New York City

At the time this postcard was sent, you could get a lobster dinner at the Lobster, Oyster and Chop House for under $3. In fact, for $2.50 you could get the Special Continental Supper, which included clam chowder, deviled crab, a whole Maine lobster, french fries, cole slaw, and coffee. There was an amazing variety though, and you could instead order smelts ($1.50), bluefish (also $1.50), Finnan Haddie ($1.35), shad roe ($2.25), mackerel, scallops, swordfish etc. And if you weren't in the mood for fish, you could order prime rib, a roasted chicken, or veal cutlets among many other things.

I came upon a website that gives a very nice description and a short history of the restaurant. Here's what the website, created by Bill Bence, has to say about it:

The Lobster Palaces

After a movie at one of the downtown palaces Mimi Sheraton's affluent Brooklyn family sometimes went to The Lobster, Oyster and Chophouse, better known simply as The Lobster by its patrons, Sheraton's college boyfriend also took her there on dates in the mid-40s. It was located on West 45th Street near Times Square and had opened in 1919. Lobster houses had been a Times Square fixture for decades. Around the turn of the century they were posh hangouts, along with oyster bars, for the sporting crowd. The Lobster and its 1946 counterparts were more mid-market. Sheraton always ordered the lobster but she writes that her mother would order “strange” things like gray sole, broiled bluefish, steamed codfish or finnan haddie with an egg or cream sauce

In his 1930s guidebook Dining in New York, Rian James described The Lobster as “a low-ceilinged, rambling restaurant with the grace and courtliness of a one-arm cafeteria; with rushing, ribald waiters, who dash up and down between the long aisles of tables with squirming lobsters in their hands, who take your order in a restless, 'must be getting away' fashion, making the distance between the oyster bar, up front, and the kitchen in the rear, in pretty nearly nothing flat.” The walls were decorated with mounted lobsters and fish and cartoons from Harry Hershfield and Fay King. According to Rian, it also had the best seafood in the city at a reasonable prices, which drew mobs of suburban and outer borough theatergoers in such numbers that people waited on line on the sidewalk to get in. The many other lobster houses in the immediate vicinity based their business on the overflow.

The Lobster was among a number of establishments that were fined in February 1946 for charging customers more than the legal ceiling prices set by the OPA. The Lobster paid a much higher fine than the other restaurants cited. That summer it also was cited for unsanitary conditions. It stayed in business until 1972 when increased costs, declining patronage and a change in the neighborhood made it no longer profitable. It was a favorite lunch spot for the staff of The New Yorker and Richard Harris wrote a "Reporter At Large" piece in the December 30 issue about its closing. To him it was a "comfortably unattractive," bustling place with efficient waiters and the air of convivial private club where you could get simply prepared, fresh seafood at reasonable prices. The owners, who were really pissed at the unions as well as the city bureaucracy, told Harris that the unions used to block the employment of African-Americans from any but menial positions. They defied the unions to promote a Black employee to the oyster bar.

The back of the postcard seems a little odd, since it has a return address stamp from New York, but was postmarked in Astoria, Oregon...and there's no message.  It's not quite as strange though if you know that the recipient, Edwin Payne, was a postcard, stamp, and cover collector and a postal historian. Here's a plaque in his honor from The Salem Stamp Society.