I have a collection of Frisco paper items that I have been assembling for many years, starting when I bugged the station people for "Frisco stuff" at the Rolla depot when I was at MSM years ago. These are such things as Frisco ink blotters, memo pads, coasters, ticket envelopes, calendars, match books, etc. Does anybody else in frisco.org collect this kind of stuff? My favorites are the ink blotters and the memo pads. They gave these away to passengers and shippers. Back in the Frisco Museum's All Aboard days, Alan and I talked about doing some articles to describe these items of Frisco history. I recall he did one about the memo pads, but I don't recall anything on the blotters. If any of you have some of these, I'd suggest we post scans of them and see how many different ones we can come up with. There were dozens of both blotter and memo pad designs. I'd like to get a better idea than I have of just how many designs there were. Blotters first. Here are two of my favorites (no surprise!). Who else has some to share? Ken
Here is the Frisco Faster Freight blotter, color corrected for yellowing. Also the Passenger Loco and Power Plus blotters corrected for yellowing.
They were 3"x 6" size, and were in very common use back in the old days (like when I was a kid - Yikes!) before ball point pens and gel pens were invented. The ink pens back then used water based inks which took a bit of time to dry. To prevent smearing, people used a blotter on their writing to dry it quickly. This was often a problem for we left-handed types. I used a blotter often when I was doing a paper in school, for example. I had this really neat Parker pen with a tip that really laid down the ink, so the blotter was always close at hand. They were very common - but I never had a Frisco one! Attached is a blotter announcing a new Frisco ticket office in St. Louis. Ken
Those are really nice ... I presume that the bottom was used for blotting? Sure would not want to mess up the nice artwork. In Ark-Can-Saw, my school could not afford pens, although our desks' did have ink wells, and I had to walk to skool 6 miles uphill in both directions.
The opposite side from the advertising was soft and porous to soak up the ink. Early office desks had large (usually green) blotters as a writing surface. The writer would turn the whole page face down when the writing was finished. Tom
Just think of them as pre-historic mouse pads! (Hmmm...Mouse Pads. Hmmm...Fund Raiser to support FriscRG?) Glenn in Tulsa
I was asked the age of the "new ticket office" blotter I posted above. I'm guessing it is from the very late 1940's or early 1950's. Notice it has the new coonskin logo (no "Lines", no bar below it), there is no mention of The Bluebonnet, and the phone number does not have the seventh digit, which was added here in '51-'52 as I remember it. We went from PArkview 0620 to PA7-0620 then at home. I remember it because it was a big deal here in StL. The "new" ticket office was a street level office, probably in the lobby of the Frisco Building at Ninth & Olive downtown. Ken
Here are two more blotters ..... these two say it all! Those who might also have some blotters in your collection, please post them! Ken
Come on folks, dig deeper let's get more posted. I know there's more hiding out there! FRISCO CLAUS knows who's been naughty and who's been nice!
Well, the posting of Frisco blotter idea seems to have been a dud. Either nobody has any to post or there is little interest. Here is a final try from me - this might help you folks in Oklahoma get your mind off the snow. I also have a decent collection of Frisco memo pads. I've been snarfing those up for years! I am thinking of doing an article on them with pics of each example I have for the next issue of The Meteor. An alternative would be to just post them here as with the blotters. Any thoughts as to a preference? I'd like to document as many of these as we can while they are still around. Ken
HI ken I gotta postcard called "The Flash" with my grandpa in it but it's in a picture frame 'glued" and with some other Frisco QA&P pictures. I will take it apart and see if a photo can be taken of it and post. I had no idea there were so many different things done this way. Tom
Here's another SLSF blotter for our snowbound frisco.org friends in Oklahoma. Notice this is very similar to the Oklahoma blotter I posted yesterday, except that the color is different, the two StL-OK trains are shown in reverse order, and that The Will Rogers schedule is a bit slower on this blotter! Note the blotter was dated by somebody with a date stamp. This is not one I have in my collection - I was out-bid. Ken
Here's another "blotter" diversion from the snow troubles for our friends in Oklahoma, and in Texas. Ken
