Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here’s hoping you have a great Valentine’s Day, however you spend it.

If this was 1960, you might have been considering taking your honey to Brady’s Restaurant on Leavitt Road near W. 21st Street. (Today the restaurant’s former location is the empty lot between Burger King and Marco’s Pizza.)

Brady’s Restaurant will be revisited as a blog topic here very soon.

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Speaking of honey, while looking at vintage valentine cards online in preparation for this post, I stumbled over these two bee-autiful examples, both featuring bees.

Courtesy V. Desjardins

Although the puns used on both hardly left me buzzing with excitement, what caught my eye was that both of the winged & striped honey-makers were dead-ringers for the early version of our pal Billy Bee, advertising mascot for Billy Bee Honey, the favorite of our friends in the Great White North.

Billy Bee when he was just a baby bee

Billy Bee today

I did a whole post about the un-bee-lievable resemblance between Billy Bee and other bees used in advertising back here.

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Lastly, thinking of Valentine’s Day brought back some funny memories of how the holiday was observed in our first grade class at Masson Elementary School in Lorain.

Remember how we had to buy a box of valentines with enough cards that we could give one to every other kid (even those of the same sex) in the class, as well as the teacher?

Most of the pun-ny cards were pretty generic, but with charming illustrations.

There was usually a special one with a slightly more ‘mushy’ sentiment that you would give to someone you had a crush on. We also had to make and decorate a ‘mailbox’ to hold the valentines we received.

I don’t remember the valentines having any well-known cartoon characters on them like they do now. Later, Disney and Hanna-Barbara licensed their creations for use. 

I like these ones with Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.