One of the items I’ve saved from my childhood is a coloring book, and its subject matter makes it a bit special. “Fighting Yanks” measures 11 x 14 inches, with a full-color display of warplanes, an anti-aircraft gun, and a Jeep with armed soldiers (smiling and relaxed as if enjoying a Sunday drive), closely followed by a battle tank on the front and back cover. There’s no publishing date listed, but by the book’s content and my coloring “technique,” I’m guessing very early 1940s.

Published by Saalfield Publishing Co., the book contains 64 pages of military-related subjects, printed on newsprint-quality paper. Many wartime activities are included, including Seabees hacking out roads in jungles, trainees practicing hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, workers assembling bombers, an infantryman using a walkie-talkie, snipers, artillerymen, litter-bearers, and more. One page depicts an “American negro soldier on duty in Liberia.”

Several pages depict “home-front heroes,” including a woman working in a hayfield, civilian switchboard operators, a worker recycling tires, and others, including domestic factory workers. Women appear frequently in various roles: home-front workers, USO volunteers, front-line nurses and WAAC’s and WAVE’s performing military duties. Other women are shown supporting their military husbands and boyfriends.

Children are depicted in several ways: buying Savings Bonds, collecting scrap iron for the war effort, pledging allegiance to the flag, and Boy Scouts gathering in a tomato crop to help fill in for farm laborers, a scarcity during the war.
According to Wikipedia, the Saalfield Publishing Company, based in Akron, Ohio, specialized in children’s books and operated from 1900 to 1977. The company published the works of several authors, including Louisa May Alcott, Horatio Alger, P.T. Barnum, Daniel Defoe, Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, Shirley Temple, and several others.

The company made at least one misstep in 1903 when it published the “New Americanized Encyclopedia Britannica.” It was sued for copyright violation. Wikipedia doesn’t reveal the dollar amount or how the suit was settled.

My copy of the coloring book was not extensively used, and what few pages I colored were not improved by my “artistry.” As a lad of 3 or 4, I obviously had not yet mastered the technique of “coloring within the lines.”

Childhood Books

As an impoverished orphan in 1900, my dad had few possessions. Luckily, his older sisters supplied him with a few books and other items that helped him survive his childhood.

One of the books that found its way to my attic was ‘Chatterbox,’ a hardback of more than 400 pages. Published annually in the U.S. by Dana Estes and Charles E. Lauriat in Boston, and edited by J. Erskine Clarke, my book was released in 1893, the year of my dad’s birth. Florence, oldest of the eight orphans, gifted it to my dad and Grace, another sister.

My book is well-worn, its hard cover barely connected to crumbling spine by a few threads. Several pages are torn, with two or three missing. Still, it’s a fascinating look at children’s literature of that era.

Etsy, an online retailer, states that ‘Chatterbox’ began as a weekly publication for children in the U.K. by Clarke, a British clergyman who had published the first parish newspaper. Featuring children’s stories, it was also printed in book form, in both U.K. and U.S. editions, the first published in 1866. According to Wikipedia, Clarke established churches, schools and hospitals in the U.K. and was made honorary chaplain to Queen Victoria and later to King Edward VII.

Old tennis racket

Since I was a youngster, an old tennis racket has been part of our family’s collection of “never thrown-away treasures.” One of the few sporting items owned by my dad, it was made by Norvell, and sold through Shapleigh Hardware.

In 1910, my dad (orphaned a decade earlier and taken in by an uncle), struggled to put himself through three years of college at what was then known as Kirksville Normal School in Kirksville, MO. Few items survive from those days, including the certificate he received authorizing him to teach “in rural schools,” and a few faded photographs. The tennis racket is the one exception.

Made of several woods, including cedar, ash and mahogany, the racket was the least expensive of three models the company listed in a 1910 Shapleigh Hardware catalog, at $13.00. It was said to have been “strung with the Best Grade White English Gut,” and available in weights of 13, 13 ½, 14, 14 ½, and 15 ounces.