Dropped a 1968 cookbook in a puddle and the ink ran, here's the damage

Last week I was leaving a library sale in Columbus with a stack of about 8 books. It was drizzling and I had the cookbook on top, a spiral bound community church cookbook from 1968. I slipped on the curb and the whole stack went face down into a shallow puddle. The cover was laminated so that was fine, but the first 12 pages absorbed water and the old mimeograph ink just turned into purple smudges. Now the recipe for 'Depression Era Meatloaf' is just a blurry blob. The rest of the book is fine, pages 13 through 200 are perfect. I dried it between paper towels and pressed it under a stack of encyclopedias for two days. It's readable but that one recipe is gone forever. Has anyone else had a thrift find get damaged like that and you had to decide if it was worth keeping anyway? I'm leaning toward keeping it because the rest of the content is still good, but I'm wondering if I should just pitch it and look for another copy.

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1 Comment

the_nancy13d ago

That purple mimeograph ink was actually a form of aniline dye, 1968 church cookbooks printed that way are way rarer than people realize, missing one recipe makes it more of a one-of-a-kind artifact than a ruined book. Keep it, that smudge is part of its story now and the rest is perfectly usable.