Jello Cake

 

This second recipe does not have a name, but the stationary could help date it; to be honest that is what caught my attention before the list of ingredients. I have never heard of the company, the telephone number is from the alpha/numeric variety, which I knew of, but the “Des Moines 9, IOWA” left me stumped. I don’t recall ever seeing a number after a city, given before the state. What could this strange address mean? A quick call to my personal time machine (my Dad) explained it.  

The 9 after Des Moines was the Postal Zone, he explained, which was the precursor to Zip codes. According to Old Stuff Only:   

POSTAL ZONES - You may have noticed that many addresses during the period between 1943 and 1963 had a one or two digit number following the city name. These numbers were postal zones. It may surprise you to learn that postal zones were instituted in 1943 during WWII. They were necessary because many postal clerks had gone into the service and the new inexperienced postal clerks were having trouble sorting the mail. The zone system was put in place to make things easier.

ZIP CODES - By 1963, most of first-class mail in the United States was generated by a small number of large-volume mailers, so The Post Office Department devised a plan to speed handling and delivery of letter mail. By this time most businesses had automated mailing systems that could easily handle the 5 digits that would allow mailings to bypass as many as six mail-handling steps. Zip codes went into effect on July 1, 1963. ZIP stood for Zone Improvement Plan.

As for the recipe, how can you go wrong with a chilled jello, sugar, pineapple and cherry cake?