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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
I agree that "snaps" are pictures. Short for "snapshots".
ReplyDeleteThe 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.
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.
ReplyDelete