A postcard can be a polite apology between letters, like this one.
In the early years writing to you about postcards was a simple exercise to explore the materials in our family’s collection and become comfortable writing in this form. Next I began to delve into our subject matter from a variety of views, with growing confidence that I was making culturally relevant connections. Along the way, I fell in love with research again. In fact, today I’ve found two recent scholarly books on postcards that are certainly going in my bibliography, and may turn up here in a book review.
Lately, our social mission to address loneliness has me looking in the mirror, and to the past, wondering about our habits and expectations for staying in touch. I am not always great at it, as family and friends might attest. But, in defense, the social rules around communication have changed profoundly.
The Victorians would say so. One unmistakable theme in postcard correspondence from the late 19th century is the postcard apology for not writing a letter. As I visually scan the reverse of each card, sometimes batches at a time, the same sentiments come up often. It’s been too long since I’ve written. I’ll tell you more in the next letter. When will we hear from you next?
In an essay from late 2024, I muse about how important it is to hear from each other In the Middle of Things. I notice again how much the familiar phrases create a call and response. Your news is my news.
These new books I found take their investigations seriously, and I have a lot of reading to do. In particular, I want to look closer at those communication dynamics around loneliness. What does that nudge back and forth really do? There is a whole social scientific literature on information behaviors related to health. I suspect my bibliography will get longer, though these weekly essays might get smarter and shorter.
Old glass sheds light on the timeless tasks of analysis and appreciation.
After a long period of away, I came home to a small cardboard box in the entry hall. My sister brought it in and placed it there while she was checking on the house. Shipped from a friend in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t waiting too long. Still, dust gathers in the summer sun.
I pulled back the layers of packing tape to reveal a sturdy shoebox full of old postcards. Surprised? No, I knew they were coming. But, I had only a few clues what the cards might be about. I could have guessed but it wasn’t necessary. The cards were labeled and paperclipped (egads!) to reveal a nicely organized collection of Medieval stained glass in churches and cathedrals throughout Europe.
These cards were collected by the authority on the subject, Dr. Meredith Lillich, who passed away this year. She used them as convenient and cost effective reference tools for the subject she studied, visited, and wrote about in the course of a storied career. Through a series of friendly connections, the cards were entrusted to me. I am pleased to be the postcard lady, especially if it includes the chance to hold a small part of a beautiful legacy.
Abbey of Our Lady of Epau founded by Queen Berengere of Navarre in 1230
I have looked at each card once, noticing the usual attributes of place and subject matter, along with the paper, printing method, era, and condition. So many beautiful chrome color cards capturing astounding architectural details and the intricate glass embedded in lofty ceiling and windows. A number of images are real photos in black & white, and there are even a few drawings and sketches. Most have the printed particulars from their source, and only a rare pencil mark from Dr. Lillich. Her thoughts on the matter are in her many scholarly works and in the memories of those she mentored.
Looking at the cards, I noted the difficult photographic task to represent the God-like glow of sunlight through colored glass. This highly sculptural substance is meant for us to understand and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, in situ. Capturing its true effect on paper is a technical feat.
High Priest of the Temple of the Sun, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
The Angel Raphael, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
A Ship (circa 1530), King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
Shepherds with their sheep, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
I suppose my friend called me because he’s been following my efforts with The Posted Past. At first, my only charge was to comprehend the scale and dimensions of Dad’s collection. Then, it took time to find some finesse in researching and writing about postcards (which are about everything). Now I am the steward of a simple but sneaky mission to stay in touch. As I do, these wonderful opportunities arise. Slow momentum is so satisfying.
For example, Dad was still alive on the day I found the hidden trove of real photo postcards from the 1920 Olympics. Convinced of their cultural significance, I hopped into the room wondering who I should contact. The Olympics! Call them directly?
“Yep,” he said, and smiled quietly.
Years later, those rare relics are now entrusted to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. I’m incredibly proud of that exchange, and grateful to the kind and talented staff who facilitated such a homecoming. No doubt, Dad is cheering from the stadium upstairs.
What comes around, goes around. Postcards are sweet evidence of the time we set aside to stay in touch and to foster each others’ dreams. My aim is to keep just such kindness in circulation for another century or so.
Nurse Aird moved from case to case, and was never one place very long. Her friends always managed to catch up.
Over several weeks, we have been learning about Elizabeth Rowen Aird, who worked as a private nurse in the Teeside region of England in the early part of the 20th century. Her distinctive handwriting boldly appeared among a collection of vintage English postcards from 1902 to 1916. Two cards charted a course back to Redcar and an earlier essay about an unusual seaside stroll. Another single card happened to be in the right place and time in regal roadworks.
This week, we examine the postcards Liz received from fellow nurses, faithful friends, and grateful patients. This view expands the territory, too. Her friends write from Glasgow and Isle of Wight, and from more familiar stations. The cards also follow her from case to case, often forwarded to a new address where she was working.
Nurse Aird was not attached to one hospital ward. She took private cases one at a time, perhaps through a nursing registry or through established relationships with convalescence homes. She picked up patient cases on a weekly or monthly basis, often staying in the family’s home and moving on when each case ended.
William Smart’s mother still in great pain, no hope of decreasing it. Am with very pleasant people. I am keeping very well but get well tired. Went to Unity on Sunday evening – hope you both keep well. Expect to be here till away case – it only came off a week ago. Bob Payhrs is not so well. Will get direct train when it comes out. Liz
Fellow nurses kept in touch, perhaps to ease the loneliness of a stay away in a family home that may have seemed unfamiliar.
So glad to receive your letter – will answer it later. Came here on Saturday; an old lady again. This is a very old town, but we are quite in the country & it is so lovely. Am quite well & hope you are Yours, B.E.W.
Or, simply to gossip!
Thanks for pretty P.P.C. Can’t think of how P. delaying so long. Probably could not forgive herself for the ‘ride’ not coming off, sort of penance. I am wondering if you have got any fresh storyettes about ‘nurses’ now don’t keep them all to yourself you know I enjoy them immensely. Weather lovely, no work of course. how can a mere student? Ta Ta you N.S.
We don’t know if Nurse Aird had formal training or even if she chose the nursing profession. Nurses in her era had to remain unmarried to be employable, and unmarried women often became nurses. Liz must have offered a kind word to a young woman thinking about her options.
Dear Nurse, Thank you very much for P.P.C I have not been through Darlington twice. Yes, I am still thinking of going in for nursing. I shall soon be old enough. They will take them at 22 at Aston. So I shall not have long to wait. I will write you a letter in a day or two and tell you all the news. Hope you are keeping well. When are you coming over to see us. Yes I think we are all pretty well. Harry is getting married soon. I will tell you when in my letter when I write. We are having a concert next Saturday. Shall be glad when it is over. Hoping to hear from you again, I remain your loving friend. S.
Nursing would not become a registered profession in Britain until the Nurses Registration Act of 1919. Liz worked steadily for at least two decades before that law existed. Though she moved within a firm social architecture, there were few legal protections, and no patient meant no pay.
Will stay here next week & then if nothing turns up will come over during race week. Nurses are all on holiday, as there is nothing doing. Glad the belt is alright. This weather is very relaxing – the country is lovely just now – went for a drive with Miss Lucas yesterday. Liz.
Rest and relaxation came through friendships, church, and a seaside social calendar. Alice A. Lucas belonged to Liz’s own circle in Darlington, built around the Unity Society there. Her December 1906 card included good news of her mother’s health, and also her evening plans.
It was kind of you to send such a pretty P.C. to Mother. She is not quite ready yet to need you to nurse her, but has only just escaped that fate!! We have had her in her room since Friday, by Sunny Jim’s orders (a slight internal bother) We hope to have her down tomorrow. How are you, dear? We shall be glad to see you back. I am going down to the singing practice now. Mr Side is doing very well. We are arranging for a “Unity Church Society” for study of social & other questions. Goodbye – with our united love, affectly yrs, Alice A. Lucas.
This congregation met in Darlington from 1873 to 1922, part of the Unitarian church in England. It was a big part of Liz’s social world during her time there, from 1906 to 1915. Over the years, she attended concerts and lectures, walked in the park, and traveled to see friends connected through church.
6 South Ter Harrogate, Thanks for card. We wondered how you had got on. Rev S.S. Brettell comes 14 Sun Oct – fear you may not get here – we do not record.
Her mother attended a separate Unity congregation back home in South Shields. Through their correspondence, we see the bond between mother and daughter, and also the goings-on of a socially progressive faith community. A 1912 card confirms a standing weekly commitment in South Shields.
Dear Mrs Aird The U.S. meeting will be at the above adress tomorrow night. The N.E. Cafe is let for the whole of the winter for Thurs. if it suits the members I hope you will be able to be there.
Mother and daughter each had their own circles, engagements, and schedules, which sometimes overlapped.
Going up to Tyne Dock to see Harmonium to-night. Come down as soon as you can to-night. I may go to park. Liz
Despite the typical brevity and levity of postcards, they do sometimes deliver devasting news. Liz’s cases were not always easy.
Hope you are keeping better! Last Sunday I had blue baby at church in the afternoon. She had a convulsion at 11 at night & died Monday morning. It was very unexpected. The patient is alright but her mother is ill and not expected to recover – I miss the baby more than anyone she was such a sweet little thing. How cold here the weather is, a great change, you must be careful not to get cold. Much love to both, Liz.
The postcard she sent from Sedgefield Asylum comes with an ominous chill. Also known as Durham County Lunatic Asylum, it was built in 1858 and expanded in the 1880s until it held 700 patients under one roof, with its own chapel, stables, and water supply. That same building was absorbed into the newly formed National Health Service in 1948, renamed Winterton Hospital in 1949, and continued treating patients into the mid-1990s.
Bark House, Sedgefield. Hope you are all well. Have been very busy – patient still in bed. Have you read the failure of Mr Stopkus. I was with them a year ago – regular fraud – I expect to go thro the asylum next week. Hope they wont keep me in. Send me a few lines this week, not sure if I can get next week. Much love to both. Liz
Other patients wrote to Liz with the encouraging and frustrating details of getting better. Given the number of these messages, we have to assume she stayed in touch with some patients and families long after the case was over and she had moved on.
“Have been here five weeks. Am feeling much better & stronger & staying a little longer. Kindest regards. E Beaumont”
Maud, recovering in Nottinghamshire in August 1907, wrote with wry humor.
“Thanks for card – Am improving everyday – Can walk splendidly! Plenty of fresh air of course – unfortunately can’t get away from nurses – there is one visiting here just now – Are you not sorry for me? Yours”
A few messages indicate that Liz was generous, too. Gifts and parcels were exchanged regularly, including some little bonnets that seem to have been for sale. Messages nearly always offered a health update and wishes for her own wellbeing, and her parents.
My dear Nurse, Thank you very much for your nice parcel. The little bonnets are lovely. They will sell I am sure. Hope you are feeling better. Father has been ill but is better. Love from all. E.S.
Dear Miss Aird, I received your letter thanking you very very much for the present it was quite a surprise. I am enjoying myself very much and having beautiful weather. Hope you are keeping better and also your mother. Gertie.
Dear Miss Aird, Thank you very much for the biscuits. we are sorry your father & you are so ill. Mother on the improve but not able to go about yet. She will write to you as soon as she can. With love from all, Rachael
A few cards taken together trace a long friendship. Rennie, writing from Whitley Bay in July 1910:
15 Park Parade, Whitley Bay. We arrived here yesterday. Hope you will be over to see us. We are here for 10 days with Yeoman Eli. Love from Rennie.
A missed meeting the same month:
Very sorry I can-not meet you tomorrow, hope you will have a nice day at Whitby. Love from Rennie
An invitation the following September:
Cherryburn Gardens Fenham, Thanks for your invitation, shall be pleased to come on Monday leaving here 2.0 but must return 5.30. Hope your Mother is keeping better. With love from Rennie.
And a week at Langholm in 1913, with her own mother:
Mother & I have been here a week. Leaving Monday. We are enjoying the rest, a change. The weather is good, rain this afternoon for the first time. How is your father keeping? I hope better. Love from us both, from, Rennie
These cards we first approached as places—Alnwick, Nottingham, Newcastle-on-Tyne—were not scenery chosen at random. They were where Liz and her circle actually spent the free time that their arduous work allowed them. The seaside villas, the castles, and parks were the landscapes for their lives.
Read together, these cards describe a social system built almost entirely on goodwill and improvisation. The National Health Service, founded in 1948, was built to respond exactly these gaps: free care for all, a regulated nursing profession, hospitals and asylums brought under one public system. Liz’s world and her own work preceded what we think of as healthcare now. What came after was far from perfect, and it is worth appreciating what it replaced.
One day, a long time ago, we saw the King & Queen on a famous road. It was certainly something to write home about.
Cataloging a postcard album doesn’t happen in one pass. I might yearn for an efficient process that handles each card only minimally, but in the beginning even the most obvious information is so dense it can only be processed in stages. When it comes to the narratives on the reverse, the details are even more subtle. Look closely. Look again. Slowly build a theory, and an alternate. Be prepared when evidence says otherwise.
I have made three passes so far on the English album I mentioned last week. First, we sorted them alphabetically by place, then grouped by handwriting, then ordered by date. Each pass asks a different question: Where are we? Who is writing? What happens? And, for this set especially, when is the train?
This card collection was first assembled by Elizabeth Rowan Aird. Called Lizzie by her family and close friends and known professionally as Nurse Aird, she signed most of her own messages simply, Liz. Her postcards span nearly a decade, from 1903 into 1912. They have the rare benefit of including both sides of the correspondence.
Liz and her colleagues wrote to one another from nursing posts in the region. Liz organized her work scheduled by postcard and wrote home to her parents regularly. Luckily, she kept all of those cards many years on. They trace her friendships, her patients, and her long devotion to family back home in South Shields. The essays ahead will follow her travels closely: the places she stayed, the people she nursed, her life between shifts.
Some of her stops include Darlington, Middlesbrough, and West Hartlepool, which sit inside the Teesside region, built around the River Tees. Iron drove the area’s growth during the nineteenth century. Bridge building, railway manufacture, shipbuilding, and engineering all grew mightily from the local pride that ran deep in each trade in that era.
The roots of rail travel began in Darlington in 1825, when Edward Pease founded the Stockton and Darlington Railway. By the time Nurse Aird traveled regularly for work, the North Eastern Railway had knit these towns into a dense network. A nurse could move from patient to patient along the same rail lines built to move coal and iron.
These same railways also carried visitors to the coast. Holidays became easy fare for middle-class families as the railway network opened the seaside to them. The Stockton and Darlington Railway reached Saltburn from Redcar in 1861, and day trippers and holiday travelers followed almost immediately. Cheap excursion trains ran regularly. Whitley Bay, further north on the Tyneside coast, developed the same way.
Nurse Aird’s family and friends enjoyed the view from these places, too. The postcards tell of short trips to the coast, days off between assignments, a postcard sent home to signal a railway return. There is so much territory to explore in Nurse Aird’s travels more than a century ago. We’ll get there.
For now, we start on one very special day for the country as a whole. Nurse Aird’s younger brother John Aird and his companion were visiting London on holiday when they witnessed King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra open “The New Road.”
Seen King & Queen opening The New Road today. This is the 3rd time we have saw them since our arrival.
The London County Council first published its plans for Kingsway in 1898, though talk of a new route between Holborn and the Strand had circulated for years before that. The project became the largest road-building scheme in London since Regent Street in 1820. Building it through one of the most crowded corners of Victorian London meant that 3,500 residents lost their homes. One-hundred feet wide, it was one of the broadest streets in central London with a rail tunnel running under it. The road took the name Kingsway, honoring the reigning monarch.
The formal opening came on 18 October 1905, six years almost to the month after the LCC first laid out its plans. A royal procession led by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra moved through the street. A souvenir program printed on a decorative napkin laid out the day’s schedule and doubled as a keepsake. Alongside the pageantry, a petition from the Poplar Borough Council on behalf of the area’s unemployed.
John Aird and his companion stood somewhere in the crowd watching the procession go by. We know they were on holiday, having just visited Westminster and Big Ben. It was the third time they had seen the King and Queen on their short trip. Could that be true?
The Court Circular could settle the question. This daily official log of the sovereign’s engagements has run in The Times since 1803. If the King and Queen appeared twice more that week, the Circular would name the place and hour. Bound volumes covering this period sit in the Royal Collection Trust’s archive. The daily printed record itself lives in the Times Digital Archive.
It’s easy enough to believe John’s claim, though. The King kept a famously full public calendar. A visitor spending real time in London that October had a genuine chance of crossing paths with the royal couple more than once.
There’s another small clue in the postmark that reads: LONDON NW OCT 18 05 No. 19. Before modern postal codes, there were local office units. So John mailed this notable card home on a date and from a location that fits his story.
We will get one or two more glimpses of John Aird in this collection. Expect two or three more passes through the postcards at least, too, as we ride the rails in this river region. All thanks to Nurse Aird, who so often sent word ahead.
On any given day, a postcard can emerge from the collection that takes you back unexpectedly. Let’s return to Redcar.
My aim this week was to alphabetize an album of vintage English postcards, shuffling and sorting a large stack with an ally at my side who knows the geography infinitely better than me. English place names always elicit a story. Only a properly-schooled person can place Norton-on-Tees without at least a few context questions.
These two real photo postcards depict Coatham Road and the seaside pier, both of which are described in the previous article. Shortly, I’ll go back and add these to the original. There’s an even more interesting quest to learn more about Nurse Aird, her charges, and her surrounds.
This week these two cards provide a sweet reminder to keep going though we often don’t know what is ahead or around the corner. I am happy to make a short trip back to Redcar to remember the seaside, the donkeys, and how we keep up these traditions for everybody who comes after.
Though the Declaration of Independence reads to some like a guarantee of private liberties, the American pursuit of happiness is a team sport.
John Locke called human choice the engine of happiness, something each person moved toward on their own account. But, when George Mason drafted the Virginia Declaration (a predecessor to the national one) he wrote of a people “pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” A plural noun doing plural work. The Scottish moralists (widely read in that era) tied happiness to a virtue that can only exists between people, not practiced alone in a room.
Jefferson’s word choice already held two centuries of disagreement. Did happiness belong to the individual as a moral claim to chase? Or did it belong to the commonwealth, something put together like a barn-raising? Historians still argue both sides. Some read the Declaration as entirely Lockean, a document of natural rights. Others see the Scots vision: less about what a person gains, more about what is owed in return. Jefferson wrote a phrase wide enough to hold both, an overlap between our private interests and the social good that framed the dual drives of a new nation.
As I see it, happiness itself is inarguably social, a personal wellbeing tied to others. Try hoarding it, if you wonder. That we need declarations of peace and prosperity is evidence enough. Getting everyone on the same page, so to speak.
But the pursuit of happiness (and the measure of it) stays stubbornly individual. The natural and artistic wonders of a vast world do not arrive at the front door. It requires the drive. The flat open road, the boat out of harbor, the plane in flight, and toward all the dreams beyond–the navigation is always on us.
Large Letter postcards make graphic our search for ourselves and each other. Four cards from the collection illustrate the way.
Washington, D.C. stacks its letters with the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln statue, the White House fountain, the Supreme Court. The statuary of the republic laid out like a garden tour. The walk between buildings, the fountain you sit beside, the steps where a family eats lunch, the institutions and the outing are in the same invitation.
Philadelphia shows Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin’s statue, a colonial rowhouse. The card treats the birth of the country as a place you go, not just a date you memorize. Here you can walk into history on a Wednesday afternoon.
Grand Canyon, Arizona puts Native culture and ancient geology in good relations, with tribal cultures representing the wisdom of people while nature provides the grandeur.
Redwoods of California splits the difference. The large letters are built from tree bark, ridged and red-brown, and the font folds in with the forest behind. Then, a car drives right through the trunk of one letter. Nature and transportation infrastructure occupy the same inch of paper, because by the 1940s they already occupied the same American afternoon.
Today’s collection of 133 large letter postcards is a broad cultural landscape, and the pursuit runs clear to both ends, with a long drive in between. The Capitol dome and the redwood canopy make the same request of a visitor. Show up, and bring someone with you. Look up, and tell the folks at home.
The smaller towns offer the same story at a different scale. A card from Rawlins, Wyoming earnestly calls itself the “Metropolis of the Plains,” packing a courthouse, a garden, and a rail line into a handful of letters for a town of a few thousand people in those days. Topeka spells its name with a church tower, a state capitol, and a sunflower in the corner. Civic pride and natural awe in the same small rectangle. Important most to those who live there, and put on show for far-flung friends and visitors.
The call to each other is what strikes me most. No wonder that roadside murals mimic the large letter design. Packing the car, the long flat highway between stops, the cool breeze from a lookout view. Those fragments gradually form in the personal memories of each traveler. At the same time, the experience often crystallizes at the shoulder of the stranger next to you, squinting in the same afternoon light.
Thankfully, we still make these excursions 250 years on. Personal experiences expanded in service of functioning society. A happy family vacation, a woodsy writing retreat, a career-changing visit to the National Archives are just a few of my own.
We protect and promote these places not because democracy is functionally fragile or simply symbolic, but because they are the grounding locations for each generation to build the nation in their time. The pursuit of happiness is that continuous movement, home and back.
To Read More
Life in Large Letters — The Posted Past essay on the collectors, the publishers, and the design evolution of the form.
America250 — the official site of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, with events and initiatives around the July 4, 2026 anniversary.
Jeffrey L. Meikle, Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931–1950 (University of Texas Press, 2015) — the definitive study of the Teich Company’s linen postcards and their place in American visual culture.
Lydia Pyne, Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network (Bloomsbury, 2021) — a wider cultural history of the postcard as a communication medium, from Victorian craze to modern collectible.
Fred Tenney, Large Letter Postcards: The United States — a collector’s reference guide cataloging Large Letter cards by state, a standard resource for deltiologists working this specific niche.
Who do you tell when disaster strikes? Despite their cheery reputation, postcards delivered the bad news, too.
One of seven tornados cut a swath through Omaha at 5:30pm on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913. More than a hundred people perished with many more injured and the city’s infrastructure in ruin. A century later, scars of the event are still palpable in the story, architecture, and photographic memory of the city.
Devil Clouds is worth the watch. This hour-long documentary made around the 100th anniversary explores the event and its aftermath. I found it while researching the two stray postcards here. Digging through the Nebraska State Historical Society Archives, I got the tragic news more than a century late.
Disaster images fill in what words can’t describe. In the immediate response, their visual details and captions become coordinates for streets that no longer have familiar signs and recognizable landmarks. Soon, commercial postcards are for sale and news gets out to concerned family and friends. In Omaha, before-and-after pictures of restored homes and businesses appeared in less than a year. Even today, the moral story of the town is built on that rubble and their can-do recovery effort.
The vintage images help us contextualize world events then and now. Their lore of community resilience gives us clues about what to do when fortune fails us. We pool resources, stay connected, and get crafty. In Omaha, the ‘Hello Girls’ kept the few working telephone lines staffed right through the storm, then turned their building into a hospital in the days after.
Disaster postcards are a substantial niche in the much larger scene of collecting postcards that document historic events. As we discovered last year, the birth of a volcano in Mexico was global news in 1943. For a small village it was pure tragedy. For collectors, these images are rare finds.
June 1908 Kansas City – Santa Fe StreetJune Flood 1908 Kansas City
Though the timing is coincidental, comparing nature’s wrath with man-made disaster is also telling. Omaha was in a moment of rebirth as the fog of WWI descended on Europe. The Parícutin volcano plumes briefly stole the newsreel spotlight from wartime food-rationing in March 1943.
Why do we cause each other such suffering, knowing what life already has in store? The evidence is brutal, shouldn’t it also be obvious? It is best to prepare for tornado season, and avoid war.
Remember that you will die, but your vacation photos live on.
Looking back takes a measure of imagination. Even if it was you back then, time and distance change the story. The past isn’t exactly what we remember, especially when the memories aren’t even ours.
What happens when the evidence is all that is left?
Today’s time travel includes names, exact dates, even a Greyhound itinerary. In the collection, we’ll see images of two women with young children who may be grandparents now. If you’re familiar with California and its famous redwoods, this might look like a photo album of your own. Travel ephemera include maps, tickets and brochures, the lunch menu from Camp Curry, and a tiny recipe book from Fisherman’s Wharf.
This isn’t a family vacation, at least not ours. The genealogy is discoverable, but that’s not our aim. The arms-length context gives us another way to look back, a wander through the American West by bus in late summer 1955.
If you know these two, send me a note!
These photos were carefully fixed into a well-organized keepsake album documenting the fun-filled vacation, a roundtrip bus ride from Phoenix to San Francisco with a stayover at Camp Curry in Yosemite and a tour of Chinatown nightlife in the city.
Miss Betty, maybe.
Betty and Margaret with the kids.
Cute kids.
Love each other.
Stick together.
Even through this.
Even through this.
Also an adventure.
Yosemite!
Outdoor dining at Camp Curry.
Arriving home, but to the same place?
We’re not sure.
Here’s to old familiar furniture.
A meticulous hand-penciled numbering system helped me put the trip timeline together and the photo locations in order. Zooming in added more connections, including two images by Moulin, the famous photographer of San Francisco and its surrounds.
No doubt this collection came to us because of the postcards, which provides a lovely windows-down cruise up the West Coast with all the scenic stops.
Days of California Dreaming.
Signal Hill, Long Beach
Bixby Park, Long Beach
Redondo, Hermosa, and Manhattan beaches from Palos Verdes Estates view.
Union Station in Los Angeles
Los Angeles International Airport, circa 1955.
Los Angeles freeway interchange, circa 1955.
Merced, CA, looking west on Seventh Street.
Lake Yosemite, near Merced, California.
Arch Rock at Yosemite National Park
Yosemite national Park Entrance Gates and Ranger Station on Highway 140
Yosemite national Park, Half Dome and Sentinel Bridge over Merced River.
Yosemite National Park, panorama view from Wawona Tunnel.
El Capitan, Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite National Park, the Four Falls: Nevada, Yosemite, Vernal, and Bridal Veil.
Yosemite National Park, Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls.
Sequoia in the Mariposa Grove in the south entrance, Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite National Park, Big Trees Lodge.
Yosemite National Park, Wawona Tunnel Tree.
Nevada Fall with rainbow.
Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Lodge.
Yosemite National Park, the beautiful Ahwanee Hotel.
The Firefall that flares from light hitting Glacier Point.
Oakland Bay Bridge opened in 1936.
San Francisco City Hall, modeled after the US Capitol.
Mission Dolores in San Francisco, founded in 1776.
Panorama of San Francisco from Twin Peaks.
Golden Gate Park Conservatory, San Francisco
Portals of the Past, a relic from the great fire of 1906.
Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park
Steinhart Aquarium, circa 1955.
Fishing Fleet, photo by Gabriel Moulin,
Alcatraz Island, photo by Gabriel Moulin.
Union Square, San Francisco, circa 1955.
Mission Santa Barbara founded in 1786
Coit Memorial Tower on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.
Included is a night in Chinatown, as the itinerary promised. These rare, real photo postcards signed front and back may require more research.
For the summer of 1955 (and for many years after, I hope) these mementos stood in for all the laughter, mystery, and adventure that two gals can gather in a lifetime. Though the photos and memories are not our own, the little joys of summer still shine through. After all these years, the collection still reminds us to get on the bus and go.
Other people collect (or hoard) for their own reasons. I file for fun.
These handmade ceramic tiles were dropped off some time ago by an art teacher who was clearing out his studio for retirement. Exciting work ahead for him, and he’d had enough of these. He acquired them from an elderly artist, or perhaps her estate sale. She made them, sold them, and had kept this lot for quite some time herself, he said. Murky milestones, but perhaps that dates the tiles to the 1950s or 1960s in the Mid-Atlantic region.
The design is definitely mid-century, with a stylized sans-serif font that gains texture and luminosity when fired into a durable glazed ceramic tile. All caps, hand-stamped alphabet and numerals, each one a different take on patterns and colors like burlap or verdigris. I suspect some are test tiles and off-casts, and nicer now somehow.
Turns out, I do have a few Fs left
All told, the collection includes about twelve different sets. The most complete series is a light terracotta color, four inches high, with white letters and lovely ochre and rust hatch marks. Maddeningly, it has no Es.
No set is complete. Many letters and numbers have duplicates. I have a tub of tiny fives. Did I get lucky, or what?
F on the left, not an ELucky double-nickels
Long ago, at my first proper internship, I left a neatly-labeled file drawer as my lasting contribution to a small staff that was kind enough to lend me a chair one seething summer in Phoenix. All the tri-fold pamphlets from Arizona’s cultural outposts organized alphabetically. Grant-funded evidence for them, and a solid list of road trips for a budding wanderer like me. I was in it for the index.
Tile files
I’m not sure this collection will take me on a mad search for their maker. The details I have are plausible, if not plentiful, and I’m more interested in where the tiles will go from here. They have been for sale in a friend’s real-life boutique. Released, out wild again in the Chesapeake.
The remainder set is now back with me, photographed, boxed, and labeled for easy retrieval. Soon, I’ll have an image database to search and sort, and my own online shop. A summer project that will serve the postcard collections, too.
But first, some fun. The smaller sizes feel like runes, very satisfying to hold and shuffle. Yes, I spelled out several unmentionable words and phrases. The numbers 4 and 8 are my favorite designs, and who can resist Q words? Help me, indeed!
For those who want to start diagramming right now, here are the first two sets. Send me a note if you need a specific combination immediately. I know just where to find them.
I’m a fan of research that never reveals its source or finds the answer. There are still archives to explore, and a feeling that the story itself refuses to resolve.
A year ago, I wrote about the mysterious photographer Navarro who meticulously documented the birth of a volcano. This week, I found three additional Navarro images in an album full of Mexican real photo postcards. One image is directly related to Parícutin; a haunting black and white photo of the inside of the church before it burned.
The other two images will take more time to discover their origins. Now, I’m motivated to go digging for the one file folder in the Smithsonian archives that may finally tell us about this enigmatic soul.
Until then, enjoy the tragic beauty and extraordinary drama of these moments from long ago, and stay with me one more day in the mystery of it all.
