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Texas | Columns | "Texas Tales"

Old But Odd Gift Ideas

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox
Finding just the right Christmas gift for that special someone on your list has been an issue for Texans since the holiday first became commercialized.

The December 1911 issue of a long-forgotten but fun-to-read iconoclastic monthly called K. Lamity’s Harpoon offered a full-page ad from a Uvalde taxidermist with some unusual gift items for sale that some modern readers will probably wish were still available today.

Published in Austin, the Harpoon’s masthead proclaimed: “Minnows are safe, I am after whales.” Like most of that era’s practitioners of personal journalism, owner-editor John S. “K. Lamity” Bonner wrote most of the content, sold and composed advertising, handled the circulation list and kept the office swept.

Doubtless written by Bonner, the taxidermist’s ad copy began:

“Don’t waste money on useless Christmas presents. Give your friends or relatives something artistic, as well as valuable.”

Women, he continued, often send their male relatives or friends a box of cigars “with Johnson grass wrappers and alfalfa fillers.” Such cigars, he continued, “won’t smoke, and are not even pretty.”

But what about a deer’s foot thermometer?

Yes, long before all the wares offered via toll-free 800 numbers, from knives that never need sharpening to singing bass, the Muter and Collier Taxidermy Co. of Uvalde sold preserved deer’s feet with thermometers attached, suitable for hanging.

“Beautifully polished,” Bonner waxed on, the deer-foot temperature tellers were “an article that is useful as well as an art treasure.” All cloven-hooved stocking stuffer cost was $1.50 plus a dime for postage and handling.

Of course, the women folks could not be overlooked.

“Gentlemen, as a rule, send books that have been read [re-gifting apparently is not a new concept], glassware that breaks, and is lost, handkerchiefs that won’t blow good, or glucose candy that makes ‘em sick,” Bonner went on.

So, rather than giving any of those cliché articles, “send them an art treasure – a beautiful and useful work basket, made from the shell of an armadillo.”

Highly polished and lined with “dainty silk,” the baskets are “not only a great curiosity, but valuable and handy, and will last a life-time, and then some.” In other words, give a gal an armadillo shell and create a family heirloom.

An armored basket cost $1.50, same as the deer’s foot thermometer, plus “a trifle extra for express charges.”

Another gift idea ran only $1, a Miller’s Lightning Nut Cracker. Manufactured by J.H. Miller in Austin, the nut cracker, according to an ad in the Harpoon, had been “wonderfully improved.” (Presumably from an earlier model, though that is not explained in the ad.) Eighty per cent of the time, the sales copy boasted, with Miller’s Lightning Nut Cracker “nuts come whole from the shell.” On top of its efficiency, the ad continued, the device was “handsome enough for parlor, or ladie’s [sic] hat ornament.”

Imagine how stylish a young lady in 1911 would look while strolling along Congress Avenue with an armadillo basket in her hand and a nut cracker on her hat.
Austin TX - Congress Ave Capitol Bldg
Congress Avenue
Courtesy www.rootsweb.com/ %7Etxpstcrd/
For young boys, the Harpoon editor could think of no better gift than a copy of his self-published book, “The Three Adventurers,” an action-filled novel of the early days along the Texas frontier.

“Beautifully illustrated,” the 350-page softcover book cost 50 cents, payable in coin, money order or postage stamps.

Even though the book retailed for only half a dollar, Bonner had one more offer to sweeten the deal:

“Buy your boy a copy of “The Three Adventurers” for a Christmas present. Let him read it clear thorough, and then ask him how he liked the book. If he does not say that it is the best story he ever read, send the book back to us (uninjured) and we will return you your 50 cents.”

Alas, advertisers in this issue of the Harpoon offered no specific recommendations of gifts for girls. Maybe they got armadillo baskets just like their moms.


© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" December 18, 2008

More Christmas in Texas

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