Hope Arkansas World's Largest Watermelon

Hope, Arkansas is the birthplace of President Bill Clinton and is known for its World's Largest Watermelons. This linen postcard from the 1940s shows a 150 pound "champion" watermelon.

Watermelons in Hope, Arkansas began to increase in size after a contest for large vegetables began in 1917. A watermelon festival began in the mid-1920's and continued until about 1931 when it stopped due to the depression. During the early festivals, cold watermelon was served to passengers on the many trains which stopped in Hope. The festival also included a "Watermelon Queen" pageant and a parade. Several Watermelon Festivals were also held in the 1940's and 50's.

A modern watermelon festival began in 1977. The annual Hope Watermelon Festival attracts approximately 50,000 visitors to Hope over a four-day period.The festival features numerous activities including arts and crafts, melon-oriented events, and entertainment. The dates of the 2007 Watermelon Festival are August 9 - 12.

Information, history, and pictures of the festival and large watermelons can be found at http://www.hopemelonfest.com/. This site also has several videos on the "World's Largest Watermelon" page, including one showing the picking of two giant watermelons in 2005. The first melon broke when it was dropped. The second watermelon weighed in at a world record 268.8 pounds.

There is also a nice collection of giant watermelon pictures at http://www.giantwatermelons.com/. This Giant Watermelon website sells seeds to gardeners interested in growing large watermelons and cantaloupes. These seeds are from melons grown from proven genetic seed lines.

Buck Lake Ranch

Buck Lake Ranch is located in Angola, Indiana. The back of this 1952 postcard just describes the attraction as "One of America's Greatest Amusement Parks," a description which seems to be quite an exaggeration. Actually, Buck Lake Ranch is much better known as a place for country music concerts, "the Nashville of the North where almost every famous country artist has been at least once, some of them many times.."

Buck Lake Ranch was established in 1947 and is currently in business. It is advertised mainly as a place for camping and fishing in a private lake. The Buck Lake Ranch website invites people to come and help them celebrate their 60th Anniversary in 2007. They say that they have "taken great pains to restore it so it looks like it did years ago" in the 1950s and 1960s. They offer many activities and have a museum displaying country music memorabilia.

Lord's Prayer Monument

I am showing this postcard today for Memorial Day. This Lord's Prayer Monument was dedicated on Memorial Day in 1957. It is located in Sunset Memorial Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

From the back of the postcard:

The Holy Bible Lord's Prayer feature is the largest in America—28' wide, 19' tall, made of a solid single slab of pink Texas granite and lettered in solid 14 karat gold. It is one of several works of art being added to theis lovely park. It was didicated in the presence of Minnesota's Gold star Mothers and veterans of World Wars , II, and Korea.

The Jolly Green Giant

The Minnesota River valley is known as the "Valley of the Jolly Green Giant."

The Jolly Green Giant is the mascot of the Green Giant food company. The company was founded in 1903 in Le Sueur, Minnesota, as the Minnesota Valley Canning Company. The name Green Giant was introduced in 1925 to help market an unusually large pea. In 1950 the company officially became the Green Giant Company. In 1973, the Green Giant got a little assistant called "Little Green Sprout." The Jolly Green Giant was ranked by Advertising Age magazine as the third most recognizable advertising character of the century's top 10 ad icons behind only Ronald McDonald and the Marlboro Man.

In 1979 Green Giant merged with another Minnesota company, Pillsbury.In 2001 General Mills acquired Pillsbury and Green Giant.

For more information on the Green Giant Company, including recipes and history, visit the Green Giant web pages at bettycrocker.com.

Mascot trivia can be found at http://www.tvacres.com/admascots_jolly.htm and http://www.answers.com/topic/jolly-green-giant.

Holiday Inn's Great Sign

The traditional, Holiday Inn roadside sign used during 1950s-1970s era was known as “The Great Sign.” The signs were large, eye-catching, and were an American icon as recognizable to the highway traveler as the golden arches of McDonald’s.The signs were also expensive which led to their phase-out in 1982. It is doubtful that any of the old classic signs remain today.

My favorite Holiday Inn postcards are these generic artist-drawn designs of the 1960s. These postcards illustrate and promote the 1960s version of the idealized American family on vacation.

The postcard with the poolside scene also shows a Gulf Oil sign in the background, an instance of co-branding. In 1963, Holiday Inn signed an agreement with Gulf Oil Corporation to accept Gulf credit cards at its hotels. In return, Gulf would build service stations on the premises of many Holiday Inns, especially those on or near major highways.

For more information on Holiday Inn and its sign:

Wikipedia — Holiday Inn Great Sign

Wal-Mart of the Hospitality World

Come Inn Off the Highway

The Holiday Inn Sign

Good Food, Good Prices at San Gorgonio Inn

The San Gorgonio Inn is located in Banning, California.

Variations of this postcard appear to be quite common — I saw five on eBay today. There are several variations in the prices shown on the sign, the wording on the bottom of the sign, and the colors of the sky.

According to an entry in Wikipedia, the original San Gorgonio Inn was built in 1883 and served as a stagecoach stop until 1920 when a fire destroyed most of the guest rooms. The inn flourished with the coming of both U.S. Highway 99 (now known as Ramsey Street) and of Interstate 10. It remained a popular, low-cost coffee shop until 1984 when the owners died. There have been several changes in ownership since then.

The most recent information that I could find on the Internet indicates that the restaurant is closed, but the sign is still there.

Vegas Vic at Pioneer Club

The back of this postcard states that this cowboy sign was the largest mechanical neon lighted sign in the world. The Howdy Podner of Las Vegas greeted visitors to the famous Pioneer Club, complete with 24 hour gaming and the comfortable cocktail lounge and saloon.

Information from Wikipedia:

Vegas Vic is the unofficial, yet most widely used name for the Las Vegas neon sign that resembles a cowboy. The sign was a departure in graphic design from typeface based neon signs, to a friendly and welcoming human form of a cowboy. His human like abilities of talking and waving his arm constituted an immediate acceptance as the unofficial welcoming sign reproduced thousand of times over the years and all over the world. It was constructed in 1951 and stood over the Pioneer Club on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, replacing a neon sign which simply read Pioneer Club accompanied by a cowboy hat.

The Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) built a 75-foot tall neon version of a sign used by the Chamber of Commerce in 1947, designed by Salt Lake City graphic artist Partrick Denner and consisting of a cowboy in blue jeans with a yellow-checked shirt and red bandanna. It was complete with a waving arm, a moving cigarette, and a recording of "howdy pardner!" every 15 minutes, by the then president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Maxwell Kelch.

The recording was turned off in 1966, when Lee Marvin, a guest at The Mint Hotel & Casino, complained that he was too loud. It was replaced in the 1980s, but as of 2006 no longer works. The arm stopped waving in 1991. When the Fremont Street Experience was under construction in 1994, part of his hat was cut off in construction to make room for the roof.

This postcard was mailed in 1954.