This delightful menu illustration was from Klock’s Tick Tock Café in St Cloud, Minnesota, in a building in the city’s historic commercial district and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

When the clock was ticking on appetite, customers could rush in and have a steak dinner for 75c or a three-layer sandwich for 40c. There were platter luncheon options and the special of the week of this menu was chicken chow mein and an ice cream sundae for the total cost of 45c.

We believe the Tick Tock Café was in operation from 1937 till the mid1940s, after which it became the Gladstone Café.

The building itself was built in 1910 at a cost of $16,000 and is known as the Pheonix building. Its original uses were a barber shop and a variety store.

St Cloud’s nickname is the Granite city because of the granite quarries that began operating in the area in the 1880s. Formerly made up of three towns, first known as Upper, Middle, and Lower towns, the trip was arranged around two deep ravines that joined the Mississippi River and were united as the city of St. Cloud in 1856.

Thanks to WJON radio station in St Cloud for some of this information.