Maine Women Writers Collection

I always hope that childhood memories for us all can include the experience of reading the back of a cereal box.  Distractedly shoveling spoonfuls of your favorite cereal, moistened with milk, into your mouth, you become completely engaged in the promise of a toy inside the box, or a maze to challenge your brain as you armed yourself with a pencil exchanged for your spoon, or, in my generation, the chance to enter some wacky, but dreamy contest sponsored by the maker of the cereal.

My fond breakfast memories were revived for me by the discovery of  a few interesting inserts in a Mary Ellen Chase book, The White Gate, here in the collection at the Maine Women Writers Collection.  Hidden within the pages of the 1954 book were: a carefully cut out and typed contest form, a wrapper box top for Post’s Sugar Crisp (is that cereal still available?), and an addressed envelope, also typed, to Post Cereals Buried Treasure of Chicago, Illinois.  Typed on the back of the envelope is the return address—James Bowers of Montclair New Jersey.  James’s entry form, cut out from a newspaper comic section (possibly the Sunday edition because the comics on the reverse are in color– and dated 1957), is approximately 5” x 8.”  In bold letters, above what appears to be a tropical island scene—palm trees, sand dunes, ships’ wreckage, peg legged pirates, are the contest directions: “Find The $25,000 Buried Treasure.”

The clue to the treasure’s location obviously are the footprints drawn onto the sand, criss-crossing the entire scene, as the pirate, sword in hand, aptly named Capt. Portzebie by James, looks on, a parrot perched on his shoulder.  Looking carefully at the entry form, one can see that James had made his mark!—he has put a heavily penciled circle around one footprint, typed the words “Foot Print” and drawn a penciled arrow to that circled print—aka “X” marks the spot.  So—James has risked his guess, folded his entry, typed his envelope, included his cereal box label—and yet the envelope was never mailed—here it sits next to my computer.  What happened to derail James’s hopes, to dash his dreams, to leave his mail unmailed?

One interesting clue to this surprising end is that the addressed, ready-to-mail envelope’s reverse side appears to have been used to leave a note for some anticipated visitors, telling them that he/she who has written the note on James’s entry mailing must be away, but will be back after lunch, and to please come ahead.  The note’s signature does not read “James,” but possibly his mother?  Did she never intend to mail the contest entry or did she plan to erase the penciled note, then mail it?  We only know that James never entered the contest.

The book which carefully held these enclosures for many years, The White Gate, was written by Mary Ellen Chase in a desire, as she says in her preface, to write short stories that “have to do with adventures in the imagination of a child, adventures possible only through imagination.”   We have to think that on some level James must have imagined winning that contest and the money it promised—or at least to have dreamed of adventures with pirates on far-away islands, a life completely unlike his life in New Jersey.  Did he ever know that his entry went unmailed?  Or was he so totally engrossed in Chase’s book that he unwittingly pulled his unmailed entry from the table on which it rested to slip his “dreams” into the book, marking his place and then closing the book forever.  We can only hope James continued to dream and imagine himself in new adventures even if he wasn’t going to win the $25,000 from General Mills this time.