I stopped at a garage sale off of Susan Road in Oakville, MO this morning. The man hosting the garage sale didn't speak much English and sounded to be Eastern European. The items he was selling appeared to be from the 60's and 70's, so I'm wondering if he might have bought the house (50's ranch) including contents and was flushing it out. He kept pushing his cantaloupes too: "You want cantaloupe? They're organic!" Odd.
I didn't see a whole lot that interested me, but when I saw a stack of postcards, I rummaged through them. Buried within were 3 Kelloggs Cereal postcards featuring Tony the Tiger, filled out by a couple of brothers from camp in Pevely, MO. in 1966. Does anyone know anyone who ever went to summer camp? It was frequently portrayed in movies and tv, but I never knew a single person who went. The postcards span June 26, 27 and 28th, 1966 and were sent by brothers Gary and Bob (don't all me Bobbie) Bradshaw. Anyway, these are definitely a slice of Americana and I love the notes written home on back. This is the back of the card shown above. Kisses, but no hugs!:
The front of this card has "688 Pevely, MO" written in Tony's sign.
I love how he wrote "Mom" in the address and someone scratched out and replaced with Mr. & Mrs. Bradshaw.The front of this card has "Teamster's" written above the "Camp" on the sign and below that, Pevely, MO 63070. "I Love You's. Bring Books?"
Can you imagine a kid asking his parents to bring books these days? It would more likely be "Bring Nintendo DSi and cell phone!". I wonder if his plea for "Come Sunday" was just for a visit or to take him home -- his fear being he would left another week! Oh, and one last thing: "I mess you's."
Oh, you laugh as his poor grasp of plural pronouns, but he comes by it honestly -- his mother wrote some doozeys on the other postcards which I will profile in an upcoming blog.
As seen on the postcard, the family lived at 4165 Potomac in St. Louis. According to Google, this is their home:
The above is just a snap of Google's streetview as embedding them seems to cause the blogpage to go crazy, much to the consternation of one of my followers... You can follow this link to the home.
***Update****
Teamsters Camp 688 still operates as a children's camp. Now why didn't I think to look?!
so, what i want to know is... where does Tony the Tiger figure into all this? where did these postcards come from originally? were they from a cereal box? some promotional tie-in with the camp? this guy isn't a whole lot older than we are... he's probably still around. i'd be tempted to track him down, internet-ninja style, and see if he wants these cards back, or comment on them.
ReplyDeleteI believe Kellogg's would give these to camps around the country if they served Kellogg's cereals, a promotion disguised as a gift. Kids see them and want Frosted Flakes, mom gets them from their kids and think, "How nice of that Kellogg's company" and buys their products. I'm guessing Gary and Bob(bie) were 10-ish around this time, so probably mid 50's by now. I've attempted to look them up, unfortunately, "Bradshaw" is a pretty common name.
ReplyDeleteI did get some info regarding the seller from my sister who lives a few houses away. He's Bosnian and he goes to flea markets and buys stuff and sells every weekend at the house, so these cards were probably not from that house.