Appropriate to the features recently inserted here regarding the Igloo and Dog House, two cafes positioned at the south entrance to the Aurora Speedway, we draw on collector-researcher Ron Edge’s archive for menus that reveal what both were serving and for how much. First the Igloo covers and inside. The main menu is copyrighted 1941, and the “special” insert is for July 21, 1946. For economy new post-war prices have been hand-written next to the old ones. The several cartoons may be enjoyed as examples of humor that was probably introduced by the cafe before Pearl Harbor rather than after. The war had its own preoccupations and humor. One of the drawings uses the popular theme of an out-of-control husband flirting with a waitress in the presence of his peeved wife. Another honors the old joke of a refrigerator salesman making a pitch to Eskimos outside their igloo. How appropriate. There is also a rendering of another popular cartoon subject: the predator food chain.
The Dog House menu below does not reveal its age, although it is about the same as the Igloo’s. The prices may be compared. The illustration of the adorable puppy was used probably to good effect many times through the years of the Cafe’s fairly long life. In dog years it was biblical.
One more Dog House from Edge’s collection – this one in Everett, and considering the prices on the menu it was probably printed during the Great Depression. Imagine! an oyster sandwich with salad for twenty cents, or a Denver or Hickey sandwich for five cents more. But what is a Hickey sandwich?
