Bayswater's Find of the Week on the Used Book Floor Blog

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Eisenhower Had A Cake?

     We shelve books of all genres on our used book floor, but without a doubt, the books that provide the most interesting finds for us have been found in the cooking section.  People seem to feel that cookbooks are a good place to jot down notes or tuck in newspaper articles.  Really - check out the cookbooks on your shelves some rainy day and see what we mean. Cookbooks are clearly windows to our souls.

    This week’s find on the used book floor was discovered in…you guessed it, a cookbook!  Published in 1929, the “Rumford Complete Cookbook” was put together by the Department of Home Economics of the Rumford Chemical Company in Providence, R.I.  We know you are thinking it, so we’re just going to put it right out there…a chemical company that puts together a cookbook?  Interesting.

     Taped to the back cover of the book is a newspaper recipe clipping from 1955 for the Eisenhower Chocolate Cake.  This was not just any chocolate cake, we discovered.  Upon doing a little research we found that during his first year in office, Hershey hosted a giant 63rd birthday party for President Eisenhower and constructed a cake that was 9 feet wide and 6 feet tall.  This gigantic chocolate confection was made mostly of plywood and paper mache, but there was a very small portion of it that was actual cake created specifically for Eisenhower in honor of his birthday.  Only the President and his wife were allowed to eat from that cake, as the 600 other guests dined on alternate confections.  It was during this celebration that the Eisenhower Chocolate Cake was born and the recipe became a hot commodity.  It, therefore, makes sense that the woman who owned this cookbook 62 years ago would have considered the Eisenhower Chocolate Cake recipe newspaper clipping to be a “must have” in her cookbook.  Who knew?  We included a picture of the recipe in case you want to try your hand at it, too.    

       The Eisenhower Chocolate Cake recipe is only one of many newspaper clippings that we found pasted into the “Rumford Complete Cookbook” and the cookbook (complete with finds) is for sale here at Bayswater for the price of $19.99, as it was published in 1929.  To catch up with our previous finds of the week from the used book floor, you can always check us out at bayswaterbooks.com and on facebook, or stop by the store in Center Harbor and check out the used book floor for yourself!


Thursday, August 17, 2017

What Stock Did You Say You Sold (gasp) in 1968?!

     Our most recent find of the week on the used book floor is a true blast from the past in so many ways.  Tucked into a 1964 paperback copy of the novel “In Vivo” was a letter written and mailed in December of 1968 from a mother in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to her son and his wife in Niantic, Connecticut.   

     Before we get to the letter inside the book, however, we found that the book, itself, is somewhat of a find, as it is a historical novel that deals with (what was then) the relatively new discovery and use of antibiotics in the medical field.  More effective strains of antibiotics were discovered in the 1960s, the time period during which “In Vivo” was written.  How interesting would it be to read a novel today that was based on the “new” and “uncharted” discovery of antibiotics by characters back then?  The book’s 1964 reviewers couldn’t seem to put the “exciting” book down, they stated.  Ahh, progress.    

     But, back to the letter.  It appears to have been written just after the son and his wife were visiting their parents/in-laws on 3½ Elliot Street in St. Johnsbury, VT.  Yes, you read correctly – 3½ Elliot Street.  Why the half, you may ask?  We wondered, too.  Apparently, in older cities in New England, the street numbers were given out consecutively, without skipping numbers to allow for future buildings to be constructed.  As a result, ½ and even ¼ street addresses were later assigned to new structures.  That sounds like something right out of Harry Potter to us. 

     The mother wrote to her son about how she finally sold her all of her Bates stock (from the Bates Worldwide advertising and marketing company) at $19 a share after having bought a great deal of it in the mid 1940s – only a handful of years after the company was founded.  She stated that as a “staunch New Englander” she hated to risk selling it at a loss, so she got nervous and got rid of the stock when she saw the price rise above $17 a share – what she purchased it for.  Little did she know that Bates Worldwide, whose future clients would include M&Ms, Nabisco, Colgate and Palmolive (just to name a few) would prove to be a powerhouse in the world of advertising and their profits exploded in the 70s and 80s.  Too bad.  Makes you wonder what her investment would have turned into had she not sold the stock in the 1960s.  We will never know.

     As with all of our used books that we feature here at Bayswater, “In Vivo” can be yours for the price of $2.99.  To catch up with our previous finds of the week from the used book floor, you can always check us out at bayswaterbooks.com and on facebook, or stop by the store in Center Harbor and check out the used book floor for yourself!


Thursday, August 10, 2017

While Riding on a New York Railway in January, 1980...

     Do you ever watch the police procedural (or detective) shows on TV?  You know, the ones where the investigator asks the potential suspects where they were and what was happening on a particular date?  Unless the date in question was very recent, who really remembers details like that?  Our latest find of the week on the used book floor allowed us to do a little research regarding one particular date – January 25, 1980 – and what one man may have been experiencing on that day. 

     This week’s discovery was a Long Island Railroad ticket from Friday, January 25, 1980, tucked into a copy of Stuart Woods’ book, “Standup Guy”.  The ticket was purchased by a male and it is clear by the number of punches on it that the ticket was used for commuting to and from work during the week of January 20-25 in 1980.  Hmm…we wondered, what was happening during that time in the life of a Brooklyn, New York commuter?

     On that day, we surmise that the commuter could have been trying to catch a brief cat nap, as Super Bowl XIV had recently concluded and he may have been shouting at the TV until a late hour, perhaps lamenting that neither New York NFL team even made the playoffs that year (the Pittsburg Steelers won and QB Terry Bradshaw was named the MVP).  As he sat on the subway, maybe he read about how President Jimmy Carter announced a United States boycott of the Moscow Olympics to be held that summer.  Perhaps he was looking out the window and thinking about the economy and his own job security, as inflation had skyrocketed to 13.5% (it is now 2.9%) and would eventually lead to a recession in the early 1980s.  Or maybe, because it was Friday, he simply couldn’t wait for the weekend (even a cold January one in New York).

     Whatever he may have been thinking or reading about, we found that on that day in 1980, a New York Long Island Railroad ticket cost a total of .60 cents.  If the man commuted five days a week for a total of 20 weekdays in a month, he spent $12 a month on his subway pass.  To put that in perspective, if one were to purchase a ticket for the same amount of time in that subway system now, it would cost $103 (a good example of inflation).

     As with all of our used books that we feature here at Bayswater, “Standup Guy” can be yours for the price of $2.99.  To catch up with our previous finds of the week from the used book floor, you can always check us out at bayswaterbooks.com and on facebook, or stop by the store in Center Harbor and check out the used book floor for yourself! 

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Ok, Who Has That Book That I Lent Out?

     We have all probably finished a book and passed it on to someone else at least once or twice in our lifetime, but who can remember which book we gave to whom, and how long ago?  Thanks to this week’s find on the used book floor here at Bayswater, we can answer that question – at least for ten men in the year 1947.

     In a 1946 hardcover copy of Thunder Out of China, we found a list of the New Hampshire YMCA Reading Circle from 1947.  What was a reading circle, you may ask?  Was it similar to a knitting or quilting circle, where individuals gathered together to knit/quilt/work on individual projects while they visited?  The answer, at least in 1947 in NH, was no.  A reading circle featured a book that was purchased and passed on, one month at a time, to each member.  The member was granted one month to read the title and on the first day of the following month, read or not, the individual was required to mail it to the next person on the reading list.  The names of all ten men, their addresses, and the month that the book was to be in their possession are listed on a card inside of the book.  

      At that time, the reading circle consisted of men who lived throughout the state of NH in the towns of Littleton, Dover, Lakeport, Lisbon, Keene, Nashua and Center Conway.  The circle started out with Andrew in Keene for the month of September, followed by John in Dover for the month of October, and so on, until it ended up back at the State YMCA in Concord (now simply referred to as the Concord YMCA) in July of 1948.  In short, this book was read and shipped from person to person across the state roughly 70 years ago! Might we also add (gleaned from the bold typing in all caps not so subtly reminding all members of the need for promptness) that we think one would not have wanted to be late in sending the book on in this circle.  After all, Hugh from Nashua, Roger from Center Conway, or Charles from Littleton, should they be waiting on the book from you, had your name and address. 

     As with all of our used books that we feature here at Bayswater, Thunder Out of China can be yours for the price of $7, (complete with the 1947 NH reading circle find).  To catch up with our previous finds of the week from the used book floor, you can always check us out at bayswaterbooks.com and on facebook.