The Matchcover Storyteller

Her name was Anna Maude Smith and she opened her Oklahoma City cafeteria in 1928, offering what she described as “wholesome” food.  And Oklahoma City at one time had more cafeterias per capita than any city in America, but that was later, in the 1950s.

Anna Maude Smith was born outside of Case, Kansas in 1886, three years before the great Oklahoma Land Rush.  She earned a Home Economics degree from Kansas State College in 1914 and worked free for a while (just getting experience)  before landing a job at a YWCA in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  There, she turned a bad restaurant into a money-maker and that caught the eye of YWCA leaders in New York, who hired Anna Maude to help fix other Y cafeterias (she did).  But she was homesick for the west and made her way to the YWCA in Oklahoma City.  That was in 1919; she made her presence a factor in OKC, and she finally got her own place in 1928.  Its heydays were from 1940 to 1965; on one remarkable day, October 10th, 1948, The Anna Maude served more than 4,490 meals!  Anna Maude retired in 1956 and lived to be 96.  A nephew and his family ran it till it closed in August 1988.  It was Oklahoma City’s oldest when they turned off the lights.

This is the only matchcover I could find for The Anna Maude Cafeteria, a 30-strike front strike from Diamond Match in Springfield, Massachusetts.   You’ll note inside it refers to Anna Maude’s Pantry; that was right next door selling ready-to-go foods from the Anna Maude kitchen.