Connections: Postcards From the Past

From time to time my West Coast niece and nephew post family photographs on Facebook, where I am surprised by a young version of myself. I am pleased the photos were saved and are retrievable, but am reminded that I still haven’t figured out how to print photographs that arrive these days via the Internet. 

Before it became easy for anyone with a cellphone or iPhone to take photos and save them electronically, I had family photos, particularly of the grandchildren, printed, framing some and putting others in albums. Now, however, they are somewhere in the ether, which isn’t the same thing.

Recently, however, I learned that my family had a different saving habit when a box arrived from a cousin in Dallas that threw me for a loop. It contained more than 400 penny and 2-cent picture postcards (with post card as two words) to and from relatives and friends, some of whom I may not ever have known. They had been mailed in the 1940s and ’50s. 

It was easy to know there were more than 400 in the box because Cousin Harriet, or someone in her household, had divided them, bundled them with rubber bands, and written down how many were in each stack on little pieces of pink paper. 

According to Harriet, who filled me in by email, of course, my parents had saved the postcards and given them to her when she was about 10. She’s just a few years younger than I am, so you can guess how long ago that was. What I don’t understand is how or why my parents — actually, it must have beenmy mother — convinced others to send their postcards along.

Taking a random look at them, I found one with a picture of a bathing beauty that I had mailed from Atlantic City to my brother, who apparently had stayed home. “Believe it or not, I miss you. . . . Milty is cute. He belongs to a frat so we hope to make time.” I certainly don’t remember any of that.

There are postcards addressed to a family named Koyt in Newark, others from one of my mother’s nieces to her parents, one addressed to my parents on my grandparents’ farm, and one that a friend named Shayna sent to me in care of another friend, whose name was Ruth, apparently having forgotten my address. Shea said she was having a wonderful time in Chicago, and wrote: “Play Dead!” I’ve no idea what we thought that meant.

One postcard in the box made sense because it was likely to have been added to the mix. It was addressed to Harriet’s parents, who lived in the Bronx. The picture is of a hotel called the Aristocrat in Miami Beach. 

“Dear Elfrieda and Sammy,” Sam’s sister Dotty and her husband, Frank, wrote: “We arrived safe and sound, but dead tired. Train was late starting and later getting here. The weather is fair but windy. Did you have a nice time at the affair? Will write more tomorrow. Love to you and the children.”

Someone could make a profession of studying these postcards, but it’s not me. I’m afraid that what I have to do is find someone who is 10 years old and give them away.