Olden Days: The magazine Kitchen Klatter

In having coffee with my sister Mary Ellen Juett one day, she showed me a copy of this famous little magazine from days past. It was published for years by Leanna Fields Driftmeyer in Shenandoah. A number of years ago, my dear wife Mary gave Mary Ellen several historic copies of “Kitchen Klatter” that she inherited from her mother. Included was volume 10, Number 1 from January 1945, the month Mary Ellen was born. It’s one of her real keepsakes. We had a lot of fun going through this little 12-page 8 by 12 black and white publication. Like Mary’s mother, housewives kept them for years since they were filled with recipes and other useful information. There was always a letter from Leanna with her picture on page 1 telling about exciting happenings of the month. Her daughter Lucile had her monthly letter towards the back, and it carried on where “Mom” left off. It was just a newsy little family publication that apparently started back in 1934 at $1 per year. I have a felling this may have been the outgrowth of Leanna’s 9 a.m. one-hour daily Kitchen Klatter radio program over KMA radio in Shenandoah. Housewives tuned into that program with regularity because it was also typical “Hometown” happenings that everyone could relate to. She told about what they might have had for Sunday dinner, who came to visit the past week, and perhaps even about the sermon at church. Every day there was a new recipe from here and there and it was read slowly, so that all housewives could copy it down. Mary Ellen dug up her spiral notebook from her early days of married life when they lived in Reasnor, and it was filled with Leanna’s recipes. Many of them she still uses today. Mary Ellen also got out her 1978 Kitchen Klatter Cook Book of about 50 pages. It was a collection of Leanna’s recipes from more than 50 years. This one was in its 17th printing. Leanna, who was confined to a wheel chair was an energetic and enterprising lady. She marketed a dozen various “Kitchen Klatter” extracts from vanilla to lemon and maple flavoring and also such products as safety bleach, and a lot of various cleaning products. Just send your dollar bills and change by U.S. Mail and your order would soon be on the way. I well remember my mother also listening to Kitchen Klatter back in the early ’40s when we finally got a battery-powered radio. Some of the recipes she wrote down are no doubt still floating around. The little verses and snippets from that radio program also were among mom’s favorites. But, I don’t recall her ever getting the magazine. Extra dollar bills were pretty scarce back in those days and probably were needed elsewhere. I called my sister Theresa to see if Mary also had given her some of the Kitchen Klatter magazines. Sure enough, she had quite a few of them. So, between these two sisters, I will see if I can beg enough extra copies to put with this little story. It should make this bit of history a bit more interesting in the years ahead. Shenandoah was one of the famous Iowa towns back in my early days. It was the home of both Earl May and Henry Fields nurseries. They sold garden seeds by mail all over the country. I well remember my mother browsing through both new catalogs, getting ready to order lots of garden seeds for the big spring planting.

Olden Days appears on Wednesdays. Contact the author at mcneer@pcpartner.net