Terry's Cafeteria

I love these old advertising postcards.  It reminds me of a time when people didn't eat at McDonald's because the damn things were so hard to find.  I admit it.  I made a huge mistake.  Fast food places were just beginning their strangle hold on fast and cheap meals when I was growing up, and back then, I was all for avoiding the local diners, with all their eccentricities in favor of the predictability of the posted menu.  I have to say, I'd love to find a chicken fried steak, a bowl of chili, or a piece of cream pie, all cooked from the cook's own personal recipe book, all served by a waitress who would have never offered to super size things for me.

So, I did run a search on Terry's Cafeteria, and I did find a Facebook page with that title, though absent pictures of the building, I suspect it's a nostalgia site as opposed to one operated by an existing restaurant.  I found an obituary for Cleo Terry, the owner of the cafeteria.  Born in 1919 in Knoxville, Iowa, died 2008, Delaware, Ohio.  A 1937 graduate of Piqua High School, he was a World War 2 veteran who served in the Normandy campaign.  He was a member of the Disabled Veterans of America, so he didn't come out of the war unscathed.  I couldn't find anything on when Terry's first opened it's doors, but it's a fairly safe bet it was after the war. 

This card was never mailed.  Captioned, "TERRY'S CAFETERIA, 105 E. Greene st., Piqua, Ohio 45356, 1/2 Mile from I-75, West on U.S. 36.  Seating Capacity 350.  Banquet and Party Rooms.  Phone (513) 778-0566   AAA Rated."

Potluck

As I've noted before, sometimes I buy envelopes of old photographs, some of which I want and others, not.  Anyway, I don't throw any of them away, but I do have a box of old snapshots that will never get posted on this blog.  This one was kind of floating between those two poles, but in the end, I decided to publish it because it reminded me of my childhood.  I grew up in a small town where there was an endless stream of fundraiser/potluck dinners.  My mother couldn't cook worth a damn, so I enjoyed eating other people's food, and while it's true that those potlucks were dominated by macaroni casseroles and ambrosia  (I'm still not certain what ambrosia is) it was a hell of a lot better than what I got at home.

There's a processors stamp on the back, "PRINT MADE BY KODAK, R, SEP. 76."  The R stands for R-print, a reversal image made directly from a color transparency.

A Night At the Movies

Stamped on the back, "MISSION PHOTO SERVICE, 278 Franklin Street, Phone 3571, Monterey, California."  And it's dated, "9/15/41."

The Monterey of today is a town of millionaires, and probably a few billionaires as well.  It's tourists visiting the aquarium and shopping and high end boutiques.  In 1941 Monterey was a working class fishing town, the Monterey of Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

It's hard to know what this gathering was about.  There's a screen and a 16mm movie projector in the background, so they must have been there to watch a film.  The suit wearers have a banker vibe, while the open collar types could be captains in the fishing fleets.  But why were they all gathered to watch a movie?  I wish I knew.