It’s just a matchbook cover but when I spotted it in a tin full of assorted matchbooks at a garage sale, it stood up and shouted to me “HERE I AM !!!!!!!”

 This is a matchbook that Charles HOPKINS‘ place of employment, “The Independent Life & Accident Insurance Company” used for years.  They must have made a few gazillion of them with half of that gazillion in our house.

It’s amazing how strong memories develop from childhood.  Smells and visual icons are like time machines for me, traversing years in mere seconds.

I’d never seen the Statue of Liberty but that was no reason for me not to know who she was.  Everyone knows her.  And even though the company was headquartered in Jacksonville Florida instead of New York, that was no reason not to use her as the main icon for the company.