Aleene’s Tacky Glue 75th Anniversary
Photo compilation credit: ilovetocreate.com
A year to celebrate Momma Aleene
I’ve always known my Momma Aleene was born with an entrepreneur’s heart. Even at 10 years old, she was already figuring out how to make things happen. She grew up in Hollywood, California, right near the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. That place was something special back then, with its Cocoanut Grove nightclub drawing crowds—celebrities and locals alike—to hear the big bands. She’d watch them come and go, all dressed up in their finest, and it lit something in her. She wasn’t just a bystander; she was already dreaming big.
Photo credit: Tiffany Windsor - Aleene Jackson archives
One day, walking between her apartment and the hotel, she got an idea. She started collecting empty cigarette boxes, pulling out the foil linings, and pairing them with flowers from the neighborhood. With those, she made little nosegays and sold them outside the Ambassador for a few pennies each. Her vision? Earn enough money to treat her group of friends to the local movie theater. Tickets were about 20 cents in the 1930s, so she kept at it, and knowing her, she probably didn’t let anyone walk by without buying one. People passing by couldn’t resist, and she did well enough to treat her friends to the movies many times over.
In 1944, at the age of 20, she married, and when my dad enlisted, she didn’t sit still. That entrepreneurial spark of hers flared up again. She took a tiny nest egg from some insurance money—money tied to a story I’ll never forget. When I was a little girl, I asked her about the scar on her leg. She told me how she’d been a passenger in a small plane that crash-landed in a field in Whittier, California. She walked away from that with a scar and a payout, and she wasn’t about to let it go to waste.
So, with that bit of cash and a whole lot of determination, she opened a small shop in Arcadia, California. A fancy floral cooler wasn’t in the budget, but her dad came through, finding her one that ran on ice blocks delivered fresh a few times a week. She’d make the drive to the floral district in Los Angeles, picking out the best flowers for her customers’ orders. Before long, business started picking up, and that little shop—first called Arcadia Florist—grew into something she proudly renamed Aleene of Arcadia.
In the months ahead, I’m excited to share more about Momma Aleene—our family memories and the story of how she eventually gave the world Aleene’s Tacky Glue. There’s so much more to her journey, and I can’t wait to tell it!
Photo credit: Tiffany Windsor - Aleene Jackson archives
