When my mother in law passed away a few years back, my husband was left to sort out a lot of her belongings. There were clothes and furniture and household items, many of which were sold in a garage sale or given to charity.
But there were also boxes of old papers and pictures to be sorted through, and so many told stories that my husband and I hadn't known. We'd known that my father in law had been turned down for service in World War II. We hadn't known that he'd then joined the Minnesota Home Guard, nor what that service entailed. We found receipts for wedding rings and hospital visits, and other little chits and scraps that hinted at the long and interesting life that had come to an end.
The jar sitting on the author's desk with all her notes and notecards.We also found things that either didn't give away their story, or whose story were - and remain - a complete mystery. A small white jar falls into this last category. This jar has a metal screw-top lid and a red and green label that says that it once contained Peredixo Cream, a greaseless massage requisite that was sold by the American Druggists Syndicate Laboratories of New York City. The back of the label says that it is an exceptional toilet preparation that is cleansing, soothing, cooling and refreshing to the skin, that it should be rubbed into the skin twice a day, and that it will not grow hair.
The real mystery to me is that this jar wasn't packed into the box with my mother in law's hairnets, brushes and toothpaste; It was tucked into a box of papers and receipts. This led my husband and I to conjecture that perhaps it once held paperclips, or rubber bands, or push pins. I'm sure many of you have a repurposed jar on your desk corralling these kinds of small items. The jar ended up sitting next to our printer, waiting for one of us to need a small jar for some purpose. It sat there for about a year and a half.
This spring, I began research on my latest book, which for right now, at least, has the working title The Determined Will, a phrase taken from Into Battle, a poem from the English World War I poet Julian Grenfell. My story takes place on a ranch in southern New Mexico, and in a World War I casualty clearing station in France.
In my search, I came across a digitized copy of Everybody's Magazine. It had short stories by Frank Norris and O Henry, poems, articles on childcare, politics, and health issues. And in the back were lots of advertisements.
To my surprise, one of the ads was for Peredixo Cream!
Further research told me that this was a very popular cream in the 1910s and 1920s. It was touted as "the original Peroxide Cream," and claimed to contain a healing agent
called peredixo.
Harvey Washington Wiley, an American chemist known as the father of the FDA, reported that it was nothing more than soap, water, and starch. Eventually the public caught on and the cream stopped being a best seller.
Having something from my time period sitting right on my desk seemed far too serendipitous not to utilize! I felt compelled to write this little jar of cream into my novel. It shows up in Chapter One when my heroine comes in from riding fence. Agnes is a spunky, rough and ready cowgirl. She is not the type to keep face cream on her bureau. But her older sisters, who all married and moved away from the ranch are. They are also the kind of sisters who, concerned for the welfare of their tomboy sister, just might give her a jar of a miracle working cream. Agnes uses it not to catch a husband, but to sooth her sunburned, chapped skin.
Now, I look at the little white jar on my desk, and I don't think of filling it with paperclips anymore. I am filling it with stories, and letting it fill my stories with an interesting new layer of authenticity.
Jennifer Bohnhoff lives and writes in rural New Mexico. She is the author of several historical novels set in different periods ranging from the middle ages to World War II.
She is currently working on two: the one discussed above and one set in New Mexico during the Civil War. Her books are available in paperback and ebook versions from Amazon and other online booksellers.
You can read more about her and her books on her website.
