Penny Post Card: The Southern Pacific Station, Menlo Park, CA

Barbara Stone of THE LIST OF BUDDHA LISTS, The Eightfold Path passed me the link to a great website (Thanks, Barbara!), Penny Postcards, A USGenWebArchives Website.  It houses a collection of pictures of penny postcards issued before 1940 and organized by state and then county. Check it out for your home town. 

In another post, I confessed to collecting hearts.  My other eccentricity, or at least I thought it was one, is collecting post cards.  Turns out in the U.S. collecting post cards is the fourth largest hobby, after collecting baseballs, stamps, and money. World wide, it’s third after stamps and money. Obviously, it’s not that much of an eccentricity after all.  The technical name for this delightful obsession is deltiology.

This is pure entertainment for me, so I don’t have any technical knowledge.  My guess is that serious post-card collectors – as with serious stamp collectors – generally look for items in “mint” condition. No tears, marks, postmarks and so on. Although, often it would be hard to tell the date of a post card without a postmark.  

What I looked for initially were cards from my hometown, Brooklyn, or to my hometown, especially to addresses I might know.  Eventually, I became intrigued with cards for other reasons: the nature of the note on the back or an odd, unusual, or beautiful picture or sentiment, something that felt truly evocative of a specific time or place.  So I’ve ended up with an odd, unusual and beautiful collection.  

I have cards sent home by soldiers during World War I and World War II. One of fishing on Lake Almanor in California reports that the soldier is on a three-day leave. It’s post-marked November 5, 1948. Another, in French, dated “Le 8 Mars 1917″, enquires after the health of “Cher petit cousin Tierre.”  It pictures ” En Guerre = Hussards Anglais allant au front.”   I would have thought “hussars” were Hungarian, but I guess not.  The soldiers look amazingly clean, healthy and happy. Perhaps they are fresh arrivals. I have some cards from The German Military Underground Hospital at Jersey, Channel Islands.

On a more uplifting note, there’s one from a father to his daughter with this sweet poem:

Glorious, lovable, wonderful you,

I want you to know that I care;

I wish you to know that life’s happiest hours

Will always be those that we share.

Your laugh is like music, your smile is my own

When you’re happy I’m happy too.

I hope I’m the nearest, sweetest and dearest,

With a Christmas greeting for you!

Oceans of love and Kisses.

Daddy

Then there are the bridge cards like a 1909 card of the Bridge Crossing at Bronx, New York and the King’s Bridge at Old Panama dated 1936.

There’s a sweet picture of a lady in a long skirt, a straw hat, and gloves feeding a baby donkey and dated February 7, 1910.  Leontine is the sender and writing from Illinois to a child, Ellis, in Manhattan. Leontine is tells Ellis all about Central Park and encourages her to visit the park and the Bronx Zoo too.

Some cards might inspire a story. If  you are a writer, take the writerly challenge and play “what if” with this one circa 1926, which had to have seemed rather odd even in its day: ”Dear Sir: – I wish never to see you again – after last night’s experience.  I have taken a solemn resolve to be an old maid, and to bring my children up the same way.  I hate all men.  I tried so hard to please you, even rolled my stockings ‘n everything, and let you kiss me even taking a chance on getting germs.  But that’s all over now.  Your box of candy is unopened, and I’ll never eat it. Oo-Lou.”  Oh my!  :-)

So, you see the attraction.  These little peaks and insights into people and places long gone are rather fun and interesting.  And, it’s certainly fun to look at the old cards on the Penny Post site and see just how the neighborhood looked sixty or more years ago.