The Matchcover Storyteller

Let’s put these matchcovers as mid-1950s.  It’s a pair of 40-strike front strikers from Monarch Match in San Jose, CA for Offutt’s Café in nearby Petaluma.  One is a plain light blue, suggesting it might have different colored companions in a set.  The other, white, features a picture of a horse, a 1946-foaled chestnut named “Shamrock’s Banner”.  The horse is identified as “1954 California state champion” but in what, I’ve yet to learn  — parade?  Show jumping? Not sure.  .  I did learn that he sired another 25 horses between 1949 and 1972.  I have a lot to learn about that aspect of the equestrian world!  And I know some of you collect horses from farming to racing categories.  But in the end, the salient feature of this one seems to be that it was a prize winner owned by Bob Offutt, period.

 Bob and Mary opened Offutt’s Café in 1952 and ran it for 25 years, A native of Petaluma, he had first opened the Seaside Café in 1948 after service in the navy and continued its operation even after his own eponymous  24-hour-a-day café was running.  It appears Offutt’s was also a truck stop.  Facebook is full of folks with fond memories!

 But Bob was always a rancher,  horseman and expert show-jumper.  Bob and Mary opened their tack shop in 1967.  Mary noted once that back then, there wasn’t a single English rider in the state; now, English is said to be as popular as Western.   Aw for Bob, in both  the Santa Rosa “Spirit of 67 in Roses” parade, and  1968 Santa Rosa Centennial Parade (and countless others), Bob Offutt rode his big 22-year old chestnut “Shamrock’s Banner” to capture first prize as best parade horse.  In a separate article, he was known as “the guy who walks off with first prize in the best parade horse category’ astride Shamrock’s Banner..

 Later, Bob Offutt and his second wife Dee owned Offutt’s English and Tack Wear, described as the largest such enterprise in the Golden State.  Later, their daughter Julibeth and her husband ran it as Jake’s Place.

So finally.  Are there more covers out there for Offutt’s Café, or Offutt’s Ranch (not the potato-growing one in North Dakota!) or Jake’s Place, or even for Shamrock’s Banner?  My eyes are open, now!