The Matchcover Storyteller

First of all, I think the matchcover is a beauty  — great color, a nice Diamond 20-strike, front strike.  I can only imagine how many different categories this gem would fit in your collection!

 

“Poor Boy”; “Po’ Boy”; Po-Boy” —  those are the New Orleans names for what might be called where you live a sub, a grinder, a hoagie, a hero  (and more).  But the sandwich, this matchcover and the origin story all take us “down the Mississippi, down to New Orleans”.

 

It’s the story not of a father and son, but two brothers, Benny & Clovis Martin who drifted in the early 1910s to The Big Easy from their nearby home in Raceland on Bayou Lafourche. After years as streetcar conductors, in 1922 they opened Martin Brothers Coffee Stand and Restaurant in the French Market. Then we jump to 1929  — the brothers were still going strong when the electric street railway workers went on strike, a thousand motormen and conductors off the job and on the picket line.  Former conductors themselves, Benny and Clovis vowedto feed the strikers.  Their offering was a French loaf piled with fried potatoes, gravy and roast beef “debris”.  The legend aspect of all this (because the essential story is repeated in almost every New Orleans source I could find, even into the University of New Orleans) is a simple one  —  when an out-of-work striker entered the restaurant, Benny would call out “Here comes another poor boy!” Eventually, a baker helped them with a more uniformly-shaped French loaf and even as other restaurants were adding the sandwich to their menus, the Martin Brothers thrived. (Another restaurateur suggests the Po’ Boy also had a secret ingredient  — the famous New Orleans humidity!)

 

The streetcar men lost their strike.  But the Martin Brothers generosity had earned them hundreds of new customers and the restaurant sailed on.  While the sandwich style wasn’t new, it did get its “Poor Boy” name in 1929.  The brothers survived most of the Depression but in the late 30s, they parted ways and Clovis developed several other Poor Boy restaurants throughout New Orleans—“Martin & Sons”.   

This cover is from one of those.  

Clovis died in 1955.  The original spot survived into the ‘70s. And whatever you call it, the Poor Boy sandwich has become one of, if not the food ambassador of New Orleans!   Do you have this cover?  Because now you know, as Paul Harvey used to tell you, “the rest of the story”.