Ski-Hi Notebooks

A few years ago, my wife and I were poking around inside a junk shop east of Nashville, and well off of I-40, when I ran across a stack of unused school notebooks.  The cover illustration, featuring a cowboy on a bucking bronco, was more than I could pass up and I ended up going home with five of them.  Somehow in the process of moving to a different house and then moving things between rooms in that house, I misplaced them for a while.  I ran across them in a box the other night and decided they were too cool not to share.

"SAVE THIS COVER FOR VALUABLE PRIZES"

The list of valuable prizes.  Note that the terms of the contest are for the 1949-50 school year.

I didn't have a Musgrave Pencil handy for this shot so I used a Field Notes No. 2.

What a great slogan.  That appears to be some sort of geographical segment that the horse is riding on but I'm not sure what it is.

I have to assume it's no coincidence that Colorado's oldest rodeo is the "Ski-Hi Stampede."  The above 1920s photo may have even served as some inspiration.

No. 13 must mean something in regard to this notebook model but I don't know what.  Also, what is "Yellow News?"  Probably refers to the paper.  Ragland, Potter & Company was a wholesale grocery outfit based here in Middle Tennessee.  I've tried to find out what the address designation "Nashville 1" refers to but I still haven't found it.

This is an early 1900s photo of a Ragland, Potter & Co. branch in Murfreesboro, TN.  Today, Ragland Bros. owns Piggly-Wiggly and Lucky Supermarkets.

Soft and pulpy ruled paper.  I got these thinking I would fill them with all sorts of interesting stuff but I haven't had the heart to put lead to them yet.

What if I sent my kids to school with these as a joke?

I've seen some Big Chief notebooks on Ebay for as much as $100 recently which is just ridiculous.  I could be wrong but I think the Ski-Hi is a rarer bird, possibly distributed only in the Southeast.  I think I only bought half of the stack.  I've thought about going back for the rest but I don't have any idea where that junk shop was.