Lovecraft refers to the Idaho Candy Company and its signature product, the Owyhee Idaho Spud bar. It is not made with potato, but has a light cocoa flavored, soft marshmallow center drenched with a dark chocolate coating and then sprinkled with coconut. We're happy to report they're still in business and you can get your own Idaho Spud and other delicacies from their website. Although we haven't personally sampled all of it, we can attest that the butter toffee they make is quite wonderful.

Here's a look at the some of the ads for WLW that Sean found while researching this episode. WLW was one the country's most powerful radio stations in Lovecraft's day. You can learn more about them, and see bigger versions of these ads, here.

We checked in with our old friend Nick Offerman to see if in fact "wind shake" is prized by woodworkers. Apparently it is not, although other kinds of wood deformities, such as burl, do make for some very lovely furniture.

In later life Duane Rimel went on to write, among many other things, pulp erotica under the pen name "Rex Weldon". Here are some covers of just a few of his many books. Still haven't found that one about the tobacconists....

HPL used his own very personal spellings for dialects and the nicknames of his various correspondents, which makes this letter a different experience visually than it is aurally. Here are some of his idiosyncratic presentations:
Rimel = Rhi´-Mhel
F. Lee = Eph-Li
R.H.B. = Ar-E'ch-Bei

This is how Lovecraft renders the regional pronunciations of the word "half":
Cleveland = haff • Providence = häf [hahf] • Boston = hääf

The International Phonetic Alphabet had been conceived in the 1880s, but it was still under active development in Lovecraft's day, so it's not surprising if he never heard of it or thought to use it himself.