A few weeks back I
started sharing some of the best finds from my recently-deceased grandmother’s decades-long postcard collection, which she started cobbling together as a young girl in Whitehall, Montana and Orifino, Idaho in the 1920s and 30s. Most of the postcards that I was bequeathed upon her passing are dated from this era, and up into the 1960s. Like I said last time, most are site-specific snapshots from tourist attractions, churches and buildings, with very little in the way of creepy kitsch, sexist relics nor jaw-dropping absurdity. There are some great ones, though.
Click here to take a look at my first batch that I posted. Here are some more.
First up is this grotesque pair of postcards from Dusseldorf, Germany from what I believe to be the 1950s – making these weird bear lovers and bizarre bear family shots native to “West Germany”:
Next up is a 1961 snap from “Desert Christ Park” in California’s Yucca Valley, a hideous gingerbread-and-gumdrop church that “Anton Marton, a retired pattern maker, has with limited funds erected this great monument to religious unity and world peace”. I googled this place to see if it’s still around, and while Desert Christ Park’s sculpture garden is still extant, unfortunately this ‘lil chapel is no longer with us:
Many of Grandma’s postcards are actually drawings (made to look like photos) of tourist attractions, like this one from Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, SD:
Then there was the big one – WWII. Here’s a cool postcard showing all the
Axis Allied powers going “All Out For Victory” in the early 1940s:
I’ve been in antique and collectable stores with sizeable postcard collections and have seen other military-themed cards from whomever drew this one, also from the WWII era:
This one’s absolutely ancient, a 1920s view of Billings, Montana complete with horses and buggies:
I’m totally imagining the partying that went down at The Inn at Buck Hill Falls in Pennsylvania, apparently a getaway place for Pennsylvania Quakers when they needed to let their hair down for some raging bible study:
Finally, this one was sent from Butte, Montana by my Great-Grandmother Dale Houx on February 14th, 1931 to her daughter, Marvel – my grandmother - with a 1-cent stamp on it. I cannot make a snarky comment, because it is impossible in the face of such goodness and warmth.
More to come.
