Wild Postcards

“Panoramic View of Hoover (Boulder) Dam: This colorful wide-angle shot of the mighty Dam spanning the Gorge of the Colorado River shows the main highway crossing the rim with Nevada on the right and Arizona on the left. The highest dam in the world by far, it is 727 feet high, 650 feet thick at the base and cost more than $125,000,000.00 to build during the 30′s.”  With a set of numbers like that, it’s no wonder that this postcard had to be stretched out a bit; the card is 11 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall (28 cm x 9 cm).  I’m not sure I’d want to trust a card like this to the Postal Service.  For that matter, I’m not sure that they’d take it.

Before construction, the project was known as the Boulder Dam project based on its original planned location in Boulder Canyon, but this was not the official name of the dam at this time.  (The location was moved to a different canyon along the river before construction began.)  Naming of important dams is basically up to the Secretary of the Interior and, when construction began in 1930, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur announced that the dam would be named for then-President Herbert Hoover.  Not only was it a tradition to name dams like this for the sitting President, but Hoover was himself an engineer and was deeply interested in the project.

Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and FDR and his new Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, decided not to name the dam for Hoover — basically a big partisan slap in the face.  But after Roosevelt died and Ickes retired, the Congress passed a resolution to restore the name of Hoover Dam, and the resolution was signed into law by President Truman in 1947.

This postcard was produced around 1964.  Then, as now, and despite the official name change, the dam is still frequently referred to as Boulder Dam.

“Panoramic View of Hoover (Boulder) Dam: This colorful wide-angle shot of the mighty Dam spanning the Gorge of the Colorado River shows the main highway crossing the rim with Nevada on the right and Arizona on the left. The highest dam in the world by far, it is 727 feet high, 650 feet thick at [...]

I picked up this card at the Museum of Science and Industry, when I went to Chicago in 1988 to learn the intricacies of IBM’s Job Entry Subsystem 3.  (If you’re not an ancient alpha geek like myself, you won’t understand this reference; don’t worry about it.)  I sent the card off to Aunt Brenda, who at that time was the Keeper of the Cards.  I did not realize that I would get the card back as soon as I did; Brenda was only ten years older than me, but she died young.

Also of interest is the stamp I used; the “E” series stamp was the first-class letter stamp produced for the 1988 postal rate change, before the exact amount of the increase was known — hence the use of a letter rather than a number.  The stamp turned out to be worth 25 cents in postage.  It was an excess of postage for this card when I mailed it; today, it would not be worth enough.

I picked up this card at the Museum of Science and Industry, when I went to Chicago in 1988 to learn the intricacies of IBM’s Job Entry Subsystem 3.  (If you’re not an ancient alpha geek like myself, you won’t understand this reference; don’t worry about it.)  I sent the card off to Aunt Brenda, [...]

“‘Sunken Gardens’, famed beauty spot of formal gardens and rare tropical plants, attracts thousands of visitors each year.”  This is a card that my Aunt Brenda received from her friend Selma, who “had a nice vacation.”  Interestingly, Selma didn’t mail this card until she was halfway back home, sending it from Charleston, SC on 15 February 1983.  The card itself has got to be twenty years older than that, given the two-digit postal code in the publisher’s mark; it’s a “Plastichrome” by Colourpicture Publishers of Boston 15, Mass.

“‘Sunken Gardens’, famed beauty spot of formal gardens and rare tropical plants, attracts thousands of visitors each year.”  This is a card that my Aunt Brenda received from her friend Selma, who “had a nice vacation.”  Interestingly, Selma didn’t mail this card until she was halfway back home, sending it from Charleston, SC on 15 [...]

This is a marimba de tecomates (gourds) that is typical of the indigenous population of Guatemala. Similar to many marimbas in basic design (technically an arc marimba), it uses gourds as resonators.

My grandmother’s cousin, John Hodinka (“Sonny”), sent this to Grandma from Guatemala, and my Aunt Brenda added it to her collection. I asked him about the card and why he was in Guatemala. He told me it was sometime in the 1980s, though he couldn’t remember when (however, he mentions “Saturday, April 15″ on the card, which means it could only be 1989):

(I went there) through the church. They had a big earthquake down there and they needed some people to go down and help rebuild. I went down there for two to three weeks.

I’ll tell you what — I got up one morning (I slept at the preacher’s place there) and these guys were having breakfast and they were starting to talk. “What’s going on here?” I said.

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This is a marimba de tecomates (gourds) that is typical of the indigenous population of Guatemala. Similar to many marimbas in basic design (technically an arc marimba), it uses gourds as resonators. My grandmother’s cousin, John Hodinka (“Sonny”), sent this to Grandma from Guatemala, and my Aunt Brenda added it to her collection. I asked [...]