The Things We Find in Books, Chapter 4
The Friends of the Library receive book donations on a weekly basis and are most appreciative. Books are sold in our library bookstore, online, and at book sales, and all funds generated are used to support our own Black Mountain Library. And we also continue to find things in books.
Look at the certificate presented to Mary Gannon in 1979, which acknowledges her “26 years of faithful service” to Thrifty Drug Stores. This fancy certificate is big! It’s on a letter-sized sheet of paper and was found preserved in a large book. Who remembers going to Thrifty Drug Stores and eating Thrifty ice cream?? Rite Aid bought out Thrifty in 1996, and recently, Walgreens purchased about 2000 Rite Aid stores. This fun piece of ephemera certainly brings back some memories of 5 cent ice cream cones!
These two old recipes were both found in books — and neither was in a cookbook! The first recipe is dated May 23, 1913, and it appears to be for chocolate cake or brownies. Its excellent condition suggests the author stuck it in a book many, many years ago and forgot about it. The old cursive handwriting is beautiful.
The recipe for Chilli(sic) con Carne isn’t nearly as old as 1913, but it’s a lot more fragile, and the splotches on it seem to indicate it was used quite often! Read the recipe carefully. It starts out like most chili recipes. But then the recipe calls for a half package of spaghetti to be added to the chili! That’s certainly a novel approach! And at the end, see the cook’s personal note: “its(sic) good-make slaw-you both will like it.” I wonder what we’ll find next! Stay tuned.