Newspaper - Post Cards

Post card 1: Transcribed

Postmarked July 6th 1918

Tuesday A.M.

Ready to start out on another journey around N.Y. the weather seems a bit cooler this A.M. as we had rai last night. Susan is fine. M.

Post card 2: Transcribed

Postmarked February 10th, 1933

Dear Sarah: I wonder if you feel any colder than I do this morning. The coldest snap ever known here warmer to day they say – I hope so- no sun shine today. Sorry to hear miss Holsbery had a fall – Hope she will soon recover – how is your cold? I have crossed this bridge twice this last week – lovely on sunny days. Are ocean waves rolling down the ------

Josie Powers

This past weekend I took another trip to the antique store. It truly is my happy place. I could spend hours looking at each booth. I do reach a point though when my brain gets ahead of my eyes and everything begins to run together and each piece of information jumps from the card catalog of my mind to the messy floor of my brain where it is often lost. Lost information until someone or something pushes the right button and the messy floor drops out of my mouth and I resort to spouting out useless often confusing bits of information.

I was nearly to that point when I spotted some post cards in the corner of one booth, which for a rare moment had my undivided attention. I love to look through post cards to see what people wrote to each other and of course, to find any post cards that have to do with Florida. History can sometimes seem so long ago and the people are often dwindled down to a single act or time period, but when you can read what was written over 100 years ago those people become alive. You start to see history as a part of what made up today.

I found two such postcards in the pile; one from the Waldorf – Astoria in New York City and one from Tampa. The New York City post card was written in 1918 to a Chris Schaefer in Michigan, of the Schaefer Hat Store. About 10 minutes of  research revealed that Chris Schaefer was actually Christian Schaefer and the founder of the Schaefer Hat Store. The Hat Store remained in business until 2004 when it filed for bankruptcy and went out of business. The post card was sent in July.

The second post card was sent in February of 1933 from Pensacola Florida. The post card has the Pensacola Bridge in it although this one was definitely before it was a Highrise. The post card was sent in the winter and the writer discusses how surprisingly cold it had been. Yes, Florida can get cold from time to time.

What interested me even more was the years on each post card. 1918 was the year that WW1 ended. The War to end all wars was devastatingly hard on the United States not to mention Europe. Over 16 million people died as a result of the war world wide. It was not the biggest killer though, the Spanish Flu hit the same year and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide with over 600,000 being in the United States. The face of the world was altered that year. Then in 1933 a new sort of killer was “born.” The Nazi’s assumed power in Germany and within a decade the world would be plunged into another world war.

I wonder if those two people who sent those post cards almost 15 years apart were affected by any of these things. Chances are, they certainly were. Not everything in those years were bad. Toll House Cookies were invented in 1933 and the talking motion picture was only 8 years old having been invented in 1910. The Bra was invented in 1913, the fortune cookie in 1918 and Radar in 1935.

I wonder if Chris being close to New York City made hats for or sold any of his creations to the budding film industry.  Maybe that was why M. was in New York city, possibly brokering some deal for hats. I wonder if Susan was breaking in that new bra that was invented just 5 years prior. Maybe she hated them and decided she didn’t need that new fangled invention. The x-ray was invented in 1895 but wasn’t widely used until the 1930’s. I wonder if miss Halsbery needed an x-ray after her fall.

Post cards are a wonderful snapshot view into a world long forgotten. We often assume things are the same as they always have been and in some ways, some areas of our life they are. But its not till you look back that you realize how far the world has come.