The Matchcover Storyteller

First of all, there really was an Aunt Hattie  –  Hattie Boore, who with her husband Ed,  opened a hamburger spot in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1939.  But before I go there, let’s deal with the matchcovers themselves.  

The image was posted by Iowa RMS member  Michal Emerson Avitt on the RMS Facebook page.  

 (If you can, you should probably go there, even if it’s the only Facebook page you use, even if you really kinda basically dislike Facebook.   Lots of us are there, and there is a fair amount that shows up there that is NOT in the Bulletin!)

The four covers Michael posted are all 20-strike, front strike; 3 are Lions, one is a Match Corp.  at least a couple fit your “chicken” category and you can go from there with family (aunt), Florida covers and whatever else you come up with.   There are also menus out there, and ,  postcards showing a place that does look like you’d be happy to stop in.

Back in 1937, Ed and Hattie Boore were splitting time between Florida, where they ran a Tampa fruit stand and Canada, where they operated a boarding house.  They also invested in a Florida skating rink and that’s where things started heading south (pardon the pun)  –  they were victimized by a promoter who took off with the money.   But Ed and Hattie also had property in Buffalo; they sold it and bought what some called a pretty unimpressive skating rink on First Street S. in St. Pete.  Purchase price in 1939  —  $300.00!  (It would be about $6,900 today.)

Hattie hung out a sign that said “Aunt Hattie’s” and headed to the kitchen.  The place only had 16 seats, but recruits from a nearby Coast Guard station liked to hang out for 10-cent hamburgers.  

Business kept getting better.   Into the ‘40s, seating increased to 42 and then in 1950, they tore the whole thing down (except the kitchen) and built a 160-seat restaurant with a gift shop and reception room added in 1955.   

It was a place of crazy promotions and just some fun; for instance, you could pick oranges off an orange tree in the foyer.  They used a horse and wagon around St. Pete to advertise.  You could buy shares in an Alaskan totem pole.  One year, they swapped 10,00 oragnes for 1,00 pounds of fresh snow from upstate NY.  There was a piano player, hostesses in Gay 90s garb and a lot of folks called Aunt Hattie’s “a way of life”.

“Chicken in the woodpile” is French Fries & Fried Chicken  —  it’s that simple.   There was lots of other chicken, too.   

There were investment and ownership adjustments through the 1970, and then  — a rat from a nearby construction site.   It came calling very publicly, bit a worker and was very publicly killed in front of stunned patrons.  Aunt Hattie’s subsequently lost 75% of its business.  By 1985 there were structural problems and Hurricane Elena along with some IRS questions.

Ed Boore died in 1962; Hattie moved to California and died in New Mexico in 1989

Aunt Hattie’s under different ownership, closed for good in 1985.  But these stories and more linger around the interweb, because as with many of the former businesses whose matchcovers we collect, there are just too many people with too fond memories.

I’m glad they’re there..