Because I've always enjoyed sending postcards, I guess I just collected free or artsy ones as I traveled to have a ready supply. Slowly my collection grew. Then I inherited the postcard collections of my grandmas and Les's grandmas after they passed away. In just a few years, my collection grew from 100 postcards to 700+! Of course, not all of them are cool postcards, but sometimes that's just the fun of postcards -- a small snapshot of cheesy Americana.
The cool thing about inheriting postcard collections is that some of them were already written on, sometimes sent to and sent from people none of us had ever heard of. It was interesting to see how much it cost to send a postcard back in the days when my Grandma A was still single (1 cent) and to see how vague some of the old addresses were on these cards (Mr. & Mrs. Karpenko, Kief, ND), although I must add that all of my family members have always lived in small towns, so that kind of addressing would probably still work today!
Here are a few excerpts from my collection...
From my Grandpa Laubach to my Grandma Laubach, dated June 6, 1992, from Heidelberg: "Honey, I wish you were here. I miss you. I'm on their fine train, but got a wrong ticket and I wound up in Switzerland!"
From my Grandma Laubach to their employees at the Stihl Chain Saw Shop, no date, but the stamp cost 13 cents, from Los Angeles Airport, probably on their way to Hawaii: "It better be great weather where we are going -- cause we just got here by 9. This is to be a hard day -- just like work or probably a little worse. The crew says the isles are great cause they were there 2 weeks ago."
From someone named Ruth to my Grandma and Grandpa Karpenko, dated October 13, 1940, from Sidney, MT: "Yes, I landed way over here for a change. Yesterday we visited the sugar factory. My, it's wonderful to watch them make the sugar. Well, we must be going to church now. Will see you soon. Nice scenery."
From my Great Uncle George to his sister (my Grandma) Anne before she was married, dated July 7, 1935, from Twin Falls, ID: "Dear Sister Anne, Your both letters are received. The one was addressed to Boise got here about 5 days sooner than the last one. I ain't working yet but may in a short time as I just got in touch with some people around here. Everything is okay with me and was glad to hear that all is fine and well at thome. I may write a letter in a few days or after I'll be someplace else, but you can use the same address yet."
Right now my postcards are organized by state (my favorite state postcards are the ones that show a drawing of the state with all of the regional exports or activities drawn on the map), and then the non-US postcards are together with some other miscellaneous ones. It's been great to live in another part of the US because I've gotten postcards from new areas as we have traveled around a bit down here. And now Les is traveling quite regularly, so my postcard collection continues to grow. It's so much fun to look through them and see all the interesting places people I know have been. I really does give you an urge to shake the dust off your shoes and head out to do some of your own exploring.
On one of Les's recent trips, he bought some funny postcards made by a company called Duckboy. I checked them out online and laughed out loud at a couple of them. My favorite is "Row vs. Wade: The Great American Fishing Controversy." It shows a man fishing in a rowboat and another fishing in waders. To me, this is postcard humor at its finest.
As I've been looking through these old postcards, I've been motivated to write more to people. It's a great way to jot a line to someone and then perhaps leave a snapshot of your life for future generations.
1 comment:
I'm too lazy to even write a postcard. That's why hunting and gathering them for you is so rewarding to me. I especially like my new cheat of stamping the postcards with National Parks cancellations (thanks for the tip Al King!) That's 10-20 percent less card surface I have to fill up with random verbiage.
Jim Gaffigan has some brilliant postcard bits:
* Whenever I'm out of town for at least a week, I feel like I should write a postcard or something, but you can be a genius, you try and write a postcard you come across like a moron anyway: "This city's got big buildings, I like food, bye."
* You ever get a postcard, you get so excited you don't even read it! "Hey I got a postc- who cares."
* That's why when I send a postcard I quiz people. "Hey, did you get that postcard?" "Yeah, yeah yeah." "Well what'd I say?" "Uh, you were havin-" "I was in jail"
* Why do you have to be out of town to write a postcard? I want a to write a postcard to my neighbor: "I still live near you!" The guy sees me go in my apartment, flips the card over, it's just a picture of me holding a rifle.
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