Whiting Brothers Paper Collectibles

Fairly common paper collectibles from the Whiting Brothers include motel postcards, matchcovers, highway maps, and their “Courtesy Card”. More difficult to find paper collectibles are gasoline station guides, mileage tables and other promotional or business material.

Postcards and even matchcovers and highway maps can be acquired at postcard and paper shows around the USA. Matchcovers can be acquired at local matchcover club meetings or regional conventions. All items can be acquired from sellers on internet auction web sites. There may be dealers at general antique shows around the country that have some or all of these items as well. Retail antique stores or antique malls may have any or all of these items but I have not had much success at these places.

I do not know how many different Whiting Brothers motel postcards have been created and published. Any motel that was in business over an extended period of time may be documented by a series of different postcards, a new one created and issued perhaps when the establishment was modernized, re-painted, or expanded or when there was a name or ownership change. Or a new postcard image could be created whenever the motel management decided that it was time for a photographer to capture more modern automobiles in the parking lot. Aside from the Flagstaff motel, the larger Winslow motel, and the two Holbrook motels, I have seen only one unique postcard for each of the other Whiting Brothers motels but my knowledge is probably incomplete. I have two different postcards taken at different times of the Flagstaff and the larger Winslow motel. Both Holbrook motels are the most prolifically documented with multiple postcards.

Matchbooks were small advertising items that would remind the smoker about the business from which it was acquired every time he or she lit up. The Whiting Brothers purchased matchbooks for free distribution to customers of their gasoline service stations and their motels. I am a novice matchcover collector and do not belong to any clubs so I am probably unaware of all of the matchbook designs that the Whiting Brothers had.

Most matchbooks that I have seen from the Whiting Brothers advertised their motels. Matchbooks advertising their service stations are more rare and I do not know why. Certainly the Whiting Brothers had more service stations than they did motels and hundreds of travelers would patronize each service station while only ten to fifty would actually check into a motel in a day, so all I can think of is that they did not distribute matchbooks from their gasoline service stations for as many years as they did from their motels.

In any case, the Whiting Brothers seemed to have worked with their matchbook supplier to prepare common artwork for each type of business so that the matchbooks could be distributed from all outlets of that type. The only Whiting Brothers service station matchbook that I have seen was also created to represent general locations of their service stations but the emphasis was on those on Highway 66. (See the picture above left.) In the case of their more common motel matchbooks, the matchbook artwork was created to list all the locations of Whiting Brothers motels so these same matchbooks could be given away at all of their motels. The matchbooks were printed principally with red text over a yellow background similar to the colors of the Whiting Brothers signage. In the case of the motel matchbooks, the artwork changed as new motels were added or some were sold or closed. The only Whiting Brothers motel that I know that distributed its very own matchbooks was the one on Hopi Drive in Holbrook that also advertised the Kolob Restaurant. (See the picture to the above right.) One nice feature of some of the Holbrook matchcovers is that a mileage table showing distances from Holbrook to different towns along Route 66 was printed on the inside.

As seen on the left, the Whiting Brothers “Courtesy Card” is a very informative collectible. Fortunately for collectors it is not extremely uncommon. It is about the size of a postcard and it is my favorite paper Whiting Brothers collectible since it has a highway map of the Southwest on one side and a mileage chart on the other side. The map side displays key cities and towns in the California desert region, Arizona, New Mexico, the Texas panhandle, Utah, and tiny parts of southern Colorado and Nevada. All towns that had Whiting Brothers gasoline stations are shown as red dots so the expanse of their chain of gasoline stations can be seen at a glance. The Courtesy Card promised that if the driver showed the card at a Whiting Brothers gas station a “special price” for gasoline could be obtained. The map artwork changed periodically as gasoline stations were added or closed so there are multiple versions of the Courtesy Card map. Click on this picture of a Courtesy Card to view a larger version.

The Whiting Brothers printed and distributed their discount cards in guises other than the Courtesy Card shown above. The folded business card on the right has some interesting information. There are three sketches of the different types of large Whiting Brothers signs that identified their motels perhaps so travelers could recognize the signs as they searched for the motel in the particular town. It also had a Route 66 map that located their motels as well. The other panel is a table of distances from Oklahoma City, which really puzzles me since I have never seen a listing of a Whiting Brothers gasoline station (and certainly no motel) in Oklahoma City at all. So, what's the point? This folded business card was stamped from the Whiting Brothers gasoline station in Newkirk, New Mexico.

The small buff-colored card at the left also served as a gasoline discount card. Directories of Whiting Brothers gasoline stations have been published that list each station by location and number. (The Whiting Brothers assigned each service station a unique number and sometimes this number appears in the telephone directories for the towns in which the service stations were located.) They also published single card directories such as the one on the right that listed Whiting Brothers service stations open in the State of Arizona at that time. It too permitted the driver to obtain a "special price" for gasoline and oil at any of those Whiting Brothers service stations. The facilities in both Holbrook and Winslow included a "Ford Garage" which I presume was a reference to their Ford automotive dealerships too. (See the "Win a 1960 Ford Falcon" raffle ticket below.) Notice that the manager of the Kingman service station was Chet ("Chester") Lewis who later went on to build the famous Wigwam Village in Holbrook, Arizona, in 1950. Therefore, and also because so few gasoline stations are listed, my guess is that this little directory card dates back to the 1930s or early 1940s.

Whiting Brothers highway maps appear on internet auction web sites on a regular basis. I have a limited understanding of the business of customizing highway maps but the three Whiting Brothers highway maps that I show here are all Rand McNally maps that were modified for the Whiting Brothers. Customization was common among map makers like Rand McNally and Gousha particularly for gasoline and transportation companies. In the case of these three maps, the front and back covers have special artwork for the Whiting Brothers while all of other panels appear to be printed with standard map, mileage, and travel information. I have only seen Whiting Brothers maps for the southwest region of the USA as well as for individual states in the southwest but that would make sense since that was their retail area. Some of the Whiting Brothers maps employ a two-color printing process (red and black in the case of one of the maps shown) but some have three colors (yellow added) on the front and back covers. (The big “D-M” on the one map means “Desert – Mountain”. That is, Whiting Brothers states on the back of the map that “You’ll enjoy more carefree driving for D-M products are styled for our high and dry Desert and Mountain driving.”) Through the 1970s gasoline company maps were provided free to motorists stopping at gas stations for service. Now if a gasoline station even stocks highway maps they are sold to motorists.

The Whiting Brothers were late to accept credit for gasoline purchases. Their low gasoline prices attracted customers, particularly during the Depression, that simply had to pay in cash. Extending credit to people of little means would clearly jeopardize the ability of the business to financially endure. But then came the national credit cards for qualified citizens. The Whiting Brothers accepted the major credit cards of the day for gasoline, oil, and other automotive services, as well as lodging.

There was a time not too long ago when credit card transactions between the customer and the business were executed by means of a mechanical embossing gadget that often had suction cups for use on a countertop. Magnetic strips with account information were not yet applied to the backs of credit cards and the electronic systems of today were in the future. The picture to the above right shows an original Whiting Brothers plastic embossed name and account card and one of thousands of multi-part carbon credit card charge forms that the Whiting Brothers must have gone through each day at one time. The Whiting Brothers attendant or clerk would take out the mechanical embossing machine which held a plastic card like the one in the picture that had their name and own unique business account number embossed into it. The customer's credit card would be placed into the machine between guides along with the multi-part carbon form and a handle would be slid one way and then back again to mechanically emboss both the business's name and account number and the customer's name and account number together onto the form. The attendant would write in the charge amount and the customer would sign the form. One part of the form would be returned to the customer as a receipt, another part would be retained for the business's records, while another part was snail-mailed to the bank that would process the transaction. Credit card transactions were definitely low-tech back in the 1960s and 1970s and even into the 1990s at some businesses.

Other paper collectibles from the Whiting Brothers include automobile litter bags, other discount cards, mileage cards, business type cards, and gasoline station directories. The picture on the left is of a Whiting Brothers litter bag which was given out to travelers. I remember when this kind of bag was hung from a cigarette lighter knob or door handle or window crank and would accumulate the debris of the vehicle's occupants. (Do you remember the big, chrome door release handles and window cranks that protruded into the passenger compartments of our old cars? These have been pretty much replaced by safer flush door release mechanisms and power window switches today. You could probably not hang a litter bag like this from anyplace in today's automobiles.) The Whiting Brothers owned the Ford automobile dealership in Holbrook, Arizona, as as part of their business operations at one time so it is not surprising then that their service stations once had a contest promotion for a new 1960 Ford Falcon automobile as seen on the right. Did you get your contest ticket?

Other old Whiting Brothers collectibles that are not of the paper type that I have seen include motel room ashtrays and keys, signs, oil cans, and wooden pencils. In general these are pretty rare finds today.