Odds and Ends, Part 1
Two Odds and One End

Ice cream is older than we think. A food much like we know today was first served in China around 200 BC. Ancient records suggest that the later Roman emperors sent slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was flavored with fruit (mostly lemon) that was served at the end of their evening meal. The writings of Marco Polo have historians believing that he watched the making of ice cream during his trip to China and imitated what he witnessed when he returned to Italy. George Washington served ice cream at Mount Vernon.

The first commercially manufactured ice cream in America happened in Manhattan in 1777.

Thomas Jefferson was first among our ice cream loving presidents. He left behind a hand-written recipe that called for just three ingredients: 2 bottles of cream, 6 yolks of eggs, and a half-pound of sugar.

There are no easily accessible records that relate to the number of American ice cream manufacturers, but it is estimated that at least 5.75 gallons of ice cream are manufactured each year for each of the 358 million Americans.

Dolly Madison Ice Cream, the first of our Odd cards in this episode of “Odds and Ends” was an ice cream maker that ended its business affairs in November 2012. It has been difficult beyond worth to find information about Dolly Madison Ice Cream that agrees among websites, history books and newspapers, i.e., the date of establishment, 1919 or 1922. One website claim is that Dolly Madison was named for Dolley Madison; if so why not used Dolley Madison’s method of spelling her name? Another web site claim is that Dolly Madison Ice Cream was the first ice cream served in the White House; not true by nearly 120 years. Yet another website claim is that Dolley Madison was the first to serve ice cream in the White House; again, not true. There are many more contradictions.

Odd Card No. 1.

In a collection of factory postcards this “Teknitone” card was found. The publisher, E. B. Thomas of Cambridge, Massachusetts, put a caption at the bottom right corner, it reads: “Where the Best Ice Cream in Miami is Made.” The address on the card is 10800 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, Florida. The image is described as “one of the most sanitary plants in America.”

Odd Card No. 2

No one has ever called me a Norris Noal. (Or, maybe someone has behind my back and I didn’t hear them.) Has anyone ever called you a Norris Noal? If they did and you understood what they meant, please drop everything and email Postcard History immediately and tell us what it means.

Several inquiries have gone out in the last few weeks. No one has an answer that satisfies us. One responder thinks it is a put-down, a polite way of calling someone a know-it-all. Another reply suggested it to be a Vinegar Valentine. Loudmouth, windbag, egotist, boaster are some of the words found in the replies, but “braggart” was the most common. Naturally, that comes easily from the rhyme on the card:

To hear young Norris Noal, boast
You’d think he knew it all – almost
When this young fellow wiser grows
He’ll know how little Morris knows.

The End Card

The likelihood that there are other LARGE NUMBER postcards is high, but this is the first I’ve encountered. This bright-colored linen comes from the Stanley A. Plitz Company of San Francisco. (Strangely it has a Curteich look-alike production number in the bottom right corner: 8A-H348 – which decoded would be the 348^th linen (H) production number of 8 in A, the eighth year of decade A – CT code for the 1930s.)

The Golden Gate International Exposition ran simultaneously in 1939 with the New York World’s Fair on Long Island, New York.

The San Francisco event was a fair held primarily to celebrate the city’s newly constructed bridges – the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge of 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge of 1937.

A brief attempt to identify Don Killmeyer has yet to be successful. At this point we know his wife’s name was Olive, and he may have had a son (perhaps a Junior) who was the chief engineer of the Allegheny Public Works department in 2004. Attempts to reach him have failed.

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Learning comes in a package. The package is what I know, what you know, and what we can learn together all mixed up in one big Ragù of Knowledge. Don’t be bashful, use the comments section below to point out the details you can confirm or contradict.