Daily Cascade

Postcards

Prompt:
On this day in 1870 Postcards were first used in the United States. Do you send postcards? If so does it bother you that anyone can read your message? What about collecting postcards, have you ever collected them?

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Do I send any postcards? No, not really. At least, not anymore. Way back when, a friend I sent a postcard asked me to write her a letter the next time. Maybe she wanted a longer message or maybe she was annoyed with the idea that other people could read what was written on it, during transit. Not that what I wrote was so secret or so personal, either, and it wouldn't bother me if anyone read my message on a postcard. One can write only so much in such a limited space, in the first place, and I bet almost all the people who sent those cards probably kept the private matters out of their messages.

During the earlier decades, however, the postcards' significance went beyond any simple communication. From what I have gathered from my grandmother's generation of people is that they were also symbols of social status and personal expression.

It is unfortunate that, at this time, postcards have become obsolete, but I have to say, I used to love receiving them, especially from one of my uncles, during the mid-twentieth century, who used to send me a postcard with a photo of the place he was traveling, and he traveled a lot due to business.

Then, my grandfather, my mother's father, was a collector and he had a huge collection of postcards from the nineteenth century on. I never met him in person, though, because he had passed away about seven years before I was born. He used to have an antique store, but it went bankrupt during the Depression Era. This made my grandmother hate all kinds of collecting practices.

We did have some of my grandfather's card collection at home, and while I was growing up, I loved looking at those cards. I don't have any of those cards, though, since my mother gave them to someone else. I bet they would be quite valuable now, as they captured moments in time such as historical events, landmarks, and local cultural practices. The charm of those postcards in the collection and those that I myself received still stay with me, evoking a certain nostalgia for those small personal connections.