The Paper Girl

Antique & Vintage Ephemera Since 2019

Have a Hell of a Good Time in… Oklahoma!?

Oklahoma.

Out of all the possible places to find yourself black-out drunk, Oklahoma in the early 20th century is not the first on my list, nor does it make it into the top ten. Not even the top twenty.

Oil was discovered in Oklahoma at the tail end of the 19th century. That brought all sorts of riff-raff out into the wilds of the state to start drilling for black gold, and every time pay dirt was struck out in the middle of nowhere, a boomtown would crop up. These boomtowns lacked the municipal government, infrastructure, and law enforcement of established towns, and some of them never had the opportunity to develop that far. Those that did lasted well beyond the initial oil boom. Those that didn’t disappeared as quickly as they’d been built up.

There’s at least one boomtown that was gone within two years, for example.

And Oklahoma wasn’t exactly an alcohol-friendly state. Before statehood, Oklahoma was two different territories: one was dry, one was not. The Anti-Saloon League and Woman’s Christian Temperance Union were not happy with the sale of liquor at all and engaged in fierce fighting to outlaw it.

They got their way when Oklahoma became a state in 1907. That didn’t stop all the wild nonsense that tended to happen within the boomtowns, though: by their very nature the boomtowns were lawless places, mostly fly-by-night, and full of businesses meant to drain oil workers’ wallets.

And if those workers wanted to drink, by God, they’d get their drink.

So, yes, you really could, against all odds, have a hell of a good time in Oklahoma—depending upon your idea of a good time.

Wartime Latrine Humour with Exhibit Supply Company

Arcade machines were all the rage in the early 20th century. One company maintained its spot at the head of the pack for nearly one-hundred years by producing machines and their prizes, and that company was ESCO: Exhibit Supply Company.

Established in 1901 in Chicago, ESCO jumped feet-first into the very niche arcade merchandising industry and hit the ground running.

Penny arcades were still relatively new at the time, and allowed people to play carnival-style games without the need for a human to actually run the thing. J. Frank Meyer founded ESCO with the idea that there was a need for prizes for specific classes of these machines—namely, picture card vending machines. The user would insert a penny and get a picture in exchange.

Pictures came in various styles, with different series available (numbered, even) and subject matter ranging from raunchy comics to pretty ladies. These picture cards were collectible then and now, and they were only available from ESCO and their machines.

ESCO’s cards were printed on heavy stock in duotone, at a quality comparable to a photograph, almost guaranteeing that many would outlast the machines themselves (and sometimes the people that purchased them). Postcards and picture cards from ESCO are still available online, with some being sold in lots or as singles on eBay and from other private sellers.

During WWII, ESCO’s arcade machine production was put on hold, but they were still allowed to produce wartime card sets for their existing vending machine stock. The paper shortage didn’t hit them nearly as hard as it could have! From fake love letters to funny cards about life on the front lines, the factory printed all sorts of new material to help keep everyone’s spirits up. This is one such card:

This arcade card was produced as part of a set in 1943 that was full of risqué little comics, especially involving women, especially involving wartime activities.

After over 70 years in business, with only a fraction of its previous roster of employees, ESCO was sold to a sports card dealer in 1979. He sold off most of the machines and parts, but he kept the massive archive of photos that was used to produce the company’s arcade cards; he continued to produce sets from these archives until dissolving the company in 1985. The story of Exhibit Supply Co. had come to an end.

Examples of their arcade machines and cards can be found in museums and archives, especially the Made in Chicago Museum, which is where I learned all about ESCO—and you can continue the educational journey!

I wonder where the over 7,000-piece photo archive from the company’s heyday has gone, and if the last owner still has it in storage? A box of original ESCO photographs would be the find of the century! Especially if it was a complete series.

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Daydreaming About Love in This Real Photo Postcard

RPPCs were a playground for the photographers and are little works of art themselves, using a multitude of techniques to help them stand out from the crowd.

I’m not being cutesy here: between commercially-offered real photo postcards and those made by private citizens for personal use, there are likely hundreds of thousands, if not more, different images floating around in the world today. To stand out, you needed to do things that caught the eye: like hand-colouring your postcards before colour photography became common, or making whimsical additions to your work.

And that’s where this postcard by Myosotis comes in.

In this image, the girl’s clothing, flowers, and other elements are hand-coloured and we get the equivalent of a ‘thought bubble’ in the upper corner that shows our subject with her beau. How sweet!

The unfortunate part about this real photo postcard is that I cannot, for the life of me, find any information on the company—Myosotis, if I’m reading the name correctly at all, is the genus for a little flower called the Forget-me-not. You know. Those flowers we talked about a little while back with their pretty blue (or white or pink) blooms.

That’s fitting, really, for a postcard company or any artistic endeavour: every artist wants to be remembered, why not the photographers, too?

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You may have noticed of late that things have been a little slow—I’m picking at making some changes as I go along here, and I’m dealing with some stuff in real life that has made it difficult to do any writing. That said, I’m still editing images to post here. I haven’t forgotten. I’m consolidating my online stores so that I just have this one, I’m taking things like Ko-fi and rolling the functionality into this site, and I’m trying to make things easier for my ADHD-addled brain to handle.

And, yes, I’m getting assessed for ADHD and the mood disorders I’ve been dealing with for a decade, which may be part and parcel and all the same thing.

I know the general wisdom is don’t put your eggs all in one basket, but I only have so many hands and can only wrangle so many baskets at once. It’s an ongoing process.

On top of all that, I may or may not wind up losing my office space after December 2023, so I’m trying to get as much material scanned (and the physical copies sold off) before that happens. It’s really difficult when I don’t get much time to actually… work on this stuff, and my brain isn’t cooperative, but I am doing my best.

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Do you like to make things with vintage images? Show me what you’ve done and I may showcase it on my blog! I love to see what people make and do, and it would be fantastic to be able to show off my readers’ creativity! What’s something you’ve made recently that you’re proud of?

For creator showcases I need links to your work, such as your blog or an image gallery, and a little blurb about you. It would be cool to make a regular feature of such a thing!

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