"Evolution in It All”
“Having a great time. Wish you were here.” …The primary message of many a treasured postcard.
I’m NOT a deltiologist. I was unfamiliar with the word until gathering information for this ramble. If you collect postcards, you’re a deltiologist. My interest in postcards is largely historic. Methinks that postcards -- the kind you send to dear ones while traveling -- are headed the way of the buggy whip. Why send postal mail when you can snap a photo and transmit instantly via text or email? Easy. Quick. Simple. Technology makes postcards obsolete… at least their buying and sending, although deltiologists are unlikely to disappear. Collecting these nostalgic souvenirs might even increase as modern circulation diminishes.
An email from last summer triggered my postcard interest. A woman in South Carolina found me via the Hamlin Garland Society website. I’ve been Society president for several years, after a friend with the dual roles of webmaster AND president sought to shed one of his roles. Realizing minimal webmaster skills would test me greatly (ah, self-awareness!) I opted for the latter. Accordingly, the Society website lists me as contact should someone wish to reach out. Debbie did.
“Many years ago, I was given a small collection of postcards written to Hamlin Garland's wife and family mostly from Europe in the early years of the last century, from 1908 to 1914*. With one exception, they are not written to Garland himself… but I wonder if the Society might want them. They are hard to decipher, but many are signed F.K.H. … I would be happy to give them a new home.” -- Debbie, Greenville, SC, but formerly of Trempealeau, WI
The Garland Society is an online organization, without storage or display capacity. But the historical museum in Osage, Iowa, where Garland spent his formative boyhood years, has both. Yes, they will accept this gift, a transaction that soon came to pass.
Debbie explained in an email: “There are about 40 in all, given to me when I was reading the Middle Border books as a young adult by Eli Motschenbacher, a railroad man who rode all over the Plains and the Upper Midwest in the mid 1900s. Where he got them, I have no idea. He was a wonderful, colorful friend of my father's, and had numerous collections from his travels. He’d be as happy as I am to know someone might want them.”
According to the La Crosse Tribune, “Eli Motschenbacher, 74, of Trempealeau died Wednesday, December 16 (1970). He was born March, 1896… a North Western depot agent and telegrapher in Trempealeau and Onalaska until he retired in 1961.” (“North Western” is the Chicago and North Western, once among the country’s longest railroads.) Presumably, we all know what happened to the telegraph… and telegraphers. [Hold on there, Buster! Upon checking, 12.5 million telegrams are sent annually, more than twice approximately 5 million postcards that are mailed, all news to me.]
So, back to the Garland postcards. Garland’s daughters, Constance and Mary Isabel, received most of these greetings, many from exotic ports of call: Avignon, Munich, Budapest, Stockholm, Dresden. The Dresden card was addressed to the author: “Aug, 16, -12, Dear Hamlin, I am finding German cities quite as interesting as I expected. Much beautiful work going on here and some not as gratifying. There is evolution in it all. Some good friends have kept us well informed on home topics, for which we are grateful. I long to be at work again. --L.” Based on the handwriting, it’s likely this postcard is from Lorado Taft, one of the country’s most notable sculptors, Hamlin’s friend before he met and married Lorado’s sister, Zulime (zoo’-la-may).
“There is evolution in it all.” Indeed, postcards and telegrams have largely become selfies and texts. Change abounds, yet a timeless message is even more beautiful than the accompanying photo: “All is well. Thinking of you. Sending love.”
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* -- Deltiologists call 1905 - 1915 the “Golden Age of Postcards”. Figures for the year ending June 30, 1908, indicate 700-million postcards were mailed in the U.S. By 1913, it was >900-million, when it began to decline.
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Pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative:
While my sister-in-law and I were on vacation in California, she wrote and mailed postcards to each of her 13 grandchildren, most teenagers. One grandson asked why she didn’t send a text.
What a fun read, Kurt! Thank you!