The Back of the Postcard (#1)
Non-Fiction
Author’s Note: My wife loves antique shops and flea markets. I don’t have any particular interest in either but I do enjoy spending time with my wife, so I go along. I recently discovered that many vendors sell old/antique postcards and I am content to occupy myself looking through them as she picks through musty area rugs, tarnished brass artifacts and chipped pottery .
I was surprised to learn that unused, non-postmarked cards command a higher price than those that have been lovingly inscribed, lick-stamped and carried to the post office for official postmaster rubber-thumping, time-stopping, place-fixing documentation. I love the old pictures on the front but I hope you will share my fascination with the back of the postcard.
***
Postmarked: Huntington, West Virginia, April 7, 1913
To: Mrs. Edgar Ward, Bainbridge, New York
Dear Celia, This card shows the view from our hotel looking west. Flood over now, everything moving along the same as usual in Huntington. Harold improving slowly each day. Will sit up soon. Blanche and I are well and enjoy being near Harold while he is in hospital. Love, Jessie.
***
Flood? I Googled “Flood Huntington West Virginia 1913.”
On March 31, 1913, five days of heavy rain culminated with the Ohio river at Huntington cresting at 66.4 feet, 16.4 feet above flood stage. The city center was quickly inundated by the floodwaters. Thousands of homes and businesses were lost or damaged beyond repair but no lives, directly attributable to the flood were lost. Residents were temporarily housed in schools, churches, jails, hospitals and hotels.
Were Jessie and Blanche simply in town to visit dear Harold when disaster struck or were they residents who had their home washed away by the deluge? Was either one a spouse or sister to Harold? Might Harold have been injured in some heroic rescue of a neighbor?
We will never know the answers to these questions but the answers may not be as instructive to our understanding of the people of that generation as what we can read on the postcard, written on April 7th, one week after the disaster:
“Flood over now, Everthing moving along the same as usual.”
“Harold improving slowly…will sit up soon.”
“Blanche and I are well…”
My takeaway is that they took life as it came, without resentment of ill fortune and with gratitude for life’s blessings.
One thing is certain, the earthly struggles of Jessie, Blanche, Harold and Mrs. Edgar Ward are long since over.
Thank you Miss Jessie for leaving this little time capsule for me to find one hundred and twelve years later. May your star twinkle a little bit brighter tonight.
Just delightful, Jim! I do hope this might be a series of postcards from you. Coincidentally, I gathered a collection of old postcards ca 1910 for my home town of Santa Cruz. I only collected the ones with messages, as they were such a testimony to the era. One card I had said simply, "Mrs. Laurel, Please tell Hannah I brought the cows in. Yrs. Sidney."
This is brilliant, Jim. I can't help thinking how such a postcard would be written today. For a start it would be a Facebook post or something, ie public. I love the fact that it leaves us with so many questions.