Police Badges, etc.

We bought a collection of badges (police, sheriff, fire department and others) a few weeks ago and we've been going through them to catalog and price them.  I am not an expert in badges but have been learning a lot.  In most cases a badge is just a badge, but one of the badges intrigued me more than the others.  It is a 1920s Omaha Police badge with a civilian designation.  My question: under what circumstances would a civilian get an official police badge?

At first I thought the Omaha Police force was beefing up its numbers by using civilians after the 1919 race riots.  But now I think the use of civilians was something different.  Omaha organized a citizen constabulary in 1920 called “Volunteer Civilian Officers” who were primarily used for enforcing traffic regulations and providing educational programs.  I think the badges were issued to them, but I could easily be wrong.

1922 Omaha Civilian Traffic Police

Closer to home is the St. Paul Union Depot, so in honor of its recent re-opening I thought I would add this photo of an attendant’s hat badge.

We invite you to shop Antiques on Main to find these and thousands of other antiques and collectibles for sale.

Wrong About Butter Pats

Apparently I've been wrong in my understanding of how butter pats were used.  I'm talking about the little plates and not the globs of butter.  I always thought they were a throwback to Victorian times and used for fancy, formal meals.  But I was wrong.  Let me start at the beginning.

As antique dealers, we often get invited to peoples houses to buy things and this was one of those times.  The seller was downsizing and had a few things from the family farm that she no longer wanted.  The things she wanted to sell were laid out on the kitchen table. While we were deciding what we wanted to buy I was looking around and spotted a stack of flow blue butter pats.  I asked about them and she said they had belonged to her grandmother who used them on the farm and she didn't want to sell them yet.

So I had to ask - "Your grandmother had pretty fancy meals?"

"Oh no" she responded, "just your basic farm meals."

"And she used these butter pats?"

"Yes, there were a lot of boys in the family."  She went on to explain that her grandmother used the butter pats to save on the butter.  The boys usually licked their knives "clean" before taking butter and Grandmother didn't want to keep butter that had been contaminated this way.  So by giving the boys their own butter, the rest of the butter was saved.