Here’s a postcard from the sleepy little town of Oil City, Pennsylvania – but wait! In the lower right, you can clearly see three ex-convicts in drag preparing to rob the post office- doesn’t seem like that would be a lucrative target, but what do I know; the only thing I have stolen is my wife’s heart. The sender wrote, among other things;
“…Am working hard this summer. No joking, I am working 10 hrs. a day and most of the time with a pick and a shovel at that. It certainly does me good.”
He’s a better man than me, I would be whining like a loose fan belt if I had to use a pick and shovel for 10 yours, in the hot Pennsylvania August sun.
We haven’t been to the beach yet this summer, my mother psyched me out too much when I was a kid, she was so concerned the undertow would drag me out to sea while she was sneaking a Kool behind the restrooms. This is why we joined the Y, nice 4 1/2 foot deep pool, no fish or crabs, no sunburn, and you don’t track sand into the car. I think Elmer would prefer it.
Here’s a postcard from a young man training at Biloxi to (I presume) his girlfriend back home. Or maybe his girl friend. Back then I think a guy could be friends with a girl without complications.
Sometimes the postcards I collect interest me more from the message written on them than the postcard image. For example, this young lady writes to her friend;
My name is John, so I know a thing or two about Dear John letters. One time my wife wrote me a John Deere letter, and ran off with a tractor salesman.
So my wife says, “Why did this lady take a tiger to the beach?”
Most of the text on the back of this postcard, presumably written from the New Bedford, MA. YMCA in February of 1913, reads;
