Sunday, August 18, 2013

Postcard Project: 1930s, Part 2

As always, any spelling/grammatical mistakes were were made by card authors & copied verbatim by me.

July 7, 1931
Addressed to Grandma. Text below.

"Dear [redacted]: We got here O.K. Wont to go north tomorrow. Were up to see Ted. [illegible] to-nite. Everything is fine. Good luck till we return. bye [names redacted]."

This card is from Grandma's elder sister & her husband.

August 12, 1931
See below for text.

This card has no postage, so it was never sent. The text on the back is as follows:

On the correspondence side - "Souvenier of Barbar Beach Mich. Aug. 12, 1931."

On the addressee side - "Paul Domke [address follows], John Greszer [address follows]."

I'm under the impression that, as the card indicates, it was purchased as a souvenir from a trip. I believe that the two male names & addresses were gentlemen that the person who bought the card met on the trip & that the card bearer intended to write correspondence to them in the future.

September 18, 1931
Addressed to Grandma. Text below.

"How do you like it. Believe it or not. M.N."

Let's not forget that "M.N." is Mary, Grandma's good friend.

September 21, 1931
Addressed to Grandpa. See text below.

"Dear [nickname redacted]! Am down among the colored folk during Sept. 18, 1920. Its hot as whiz down here. I've been up in my first mountain - 5 1/2 miles high. Some mountains! At least I think so. With friendship - Doris."

I am aware that the date that Doris references in the card makes no sense, unless she held onto the card for 11 years before sending it. I assume that she wrote the wrong date, or that it was some kind of joke that I don't even remotely get.

I don't know who Doris was, but we shall see over the rest of the 1930s that a lot of ladies wrote postcards to my grandpa. Apparently he was popular.

October 9, 1931
Addressed to Grandpa. Text below.

"Hello Big Shot: Im still waiting for a letter & have some good snaps waiting. Tell Nonnie to write to. Billy [address follows]."

Oddly enough, this is the exact same racist postcard that Grandma received earlier in the year. I referred to my decision to censor the picture in my post here. I find it odd and somewhat amusing that both of my grandparents received a copy of this card long before they ever knew each other. I guess it was a popular card in 1931. Or at least, it was amongst the people my grandparents associated with.

I don't know who Billy was, other than obviously a friend of Grandpa's. I'm not even sure if "Billy" was male or female. I assume that "snaps" were pictures? Hmm, I'll have to see if I can find out more about 1930s slang.

2 comments:

Patricia said...

I agree that "snaps" are pictures. Short for "snapshots".

The syntax of "among the colored folks" brought me back to the first time I was in the Atlanta airport. I was 11, and from Boise, which was tremendously white at the time. I saw Black people on TV, of course, but I was somewhat aghast at the sheer numbers of Black people in that airport. Times had changed enough that I would never think to write to someone that I was "among the colored folk" but it was something of a milestone moment.

balyien said...

I was explaining to someone the other day that the area I grew up in, we had segregated towns. There was a white town & a black town. I think there was a total of 2 or 3 black kids in my high school. When I got out in the world & met a diversity of people, it was a shock to the system. However, I too never would have told someone that I was "among the colored folk," but then I wasn't born in the 1910s.