We'd like to thank you, Herbert Hoover

“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.

Letters? What about postcards?

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.

Chicago made me tired.

Nice shoes, Frankenheimer

“‘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.

"Native Indian playing typical Marimba Instrument, Guatemala"

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.

“You were sleeping,” one of them said. I said, “Yeah?” The guy says, “Well while you were sleeping we got woke up three different times by earthquakes.” And I didn’t hear anything! You get up high in the atmosphere and there’s all kinds of things that rumble up there, and I was working and you get so tired you don’t wake up for nothing.

When I came back I flew into Miami and my Aunt Florence (his mother’s sister. — Ed.) was waiting for me, and she drove me up to Port St. Lucie (Florida) and I spent time with her and my uncle. They put me back on a plane and I flew up to… well, I had to change planes somewhere… then I got to Philadelphia. It was cold! ‘Cause all I had on was real thin stuff.

I had a good trip down there helping somebody out. One of the guys that I went with from Bridgeton (New Jersey), on the way home, guess what he did? He got a whole bunch of firecrackers (in Guatemala), put them in a box, and put them on the plane right under the seats where we were at. I didn’t know that for a while. When he told me that I said get me out of here! If one of those things had gone off I’d have been running.

On the way home we were lucky. He took that box under his feet out of the plane and went through Customs, they just waved us through: “Keep going, keep going, keep going…”.

Air Mail from Sonny, my first cousin twice removed, to Grandma

Mount Rushmore at Night

“Illuminated by three banks of lights (about 150,000 watts) the faces of four great presidents, carved on a granite mountain, stand out in awesome splendor against the deep blue of the night sky.”

I spent the 4th of July, 1987 here and sent this card to Aunt Brenda. It is postmarked from Newcastle, Wyoming, just across the border from Mount Rushmore. Why Wyoming? Because I was a young airman at the time, and the drinking age in Wyoming was still 18.

Heavens, they're tasty

My wife came home a few months ago with two identical tins that she found at a thrift shop for something like a quarter apiece. Like most women, she will often come home with things that we don’t need because they were on sale. She bought them thinking I would love them in the same way that I love Tastykakes. And I do like the tins; I just really don’t have the room for them. Consequently, these tins have been sitting in my living room ever since, trying to find their purpose in life.

On a similar note, I am expecting today a delivery of very spiffy storage boxes and supplies (for example, archival-quality polypropylene postcard sleeves, to help preserve the collection), so I will have some new boxes for all of the new postcards that have recently joined the collection. (Also, the boxes that Aunt Brenda kept hers in are getting a little ragged.)

When my wife asked where I intended to keep the new storage boxes, I indicated that I would put them near where these Tastykake tins are situated; she then came up with the brilliant idea of keeping the supplies in these tins.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose.

For those of you who have never heard of Tastykakes, they are the most fantastic single-serving cakes and pies on the planet, having been manufactured in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1914. Growing up in New Jersey, my Aunt Brenda and I would walk to the nearest store to get them almost daily during summers off from school, and I could buy them in the school cafeteria during the school year. I used to be able to get them on a regular basis in Florida, but they had obviously been frozen for transport, seriously affecting their quality. Here in my neck of Georgia, it is rare to find them and, when I do, they’ve still been frozen.

A couple of my employees are expected to return today from a boondoggle in Pennsylvania; they were given strict instructions to return with Tastykakes in hand. If there are none on my desk when I get to work, I may have to fire somebody.

Must.. get.. song... out of head...

Here’s a card that was sent to my Aunt Brenda. The postmark is obscured, but it appears that it was postmarked on February 21, 1981. Her friend Selma writes, on February 19: “This has been some vacation — Got strep throat and felt really bad. Visited here today and start home tomorrow.”

Postcard from the vacation from Hell

Fishing License

This is a postcard my Aunt Brenda picked up on one our many trips to Western Pennsylvania, to my grandma’s old homestead. It has a post-publication stamp on the back reading “Greetings from Perryopolis, PA”.

In case you’re wondering, Izaak Walton was the author of The Compleat Angler.

Not too bad, as motels go

Here’s a card from my grandfather’s sister, Helen Henderson, mailed September 1, 1981. She writes: “Stayed here 2 nights. Was in D.C. park & saw Pandas. (Pandas? In the park? — Ed.) Thanks again for what you did for me.” I have no idea what that might have been, although if I remember correctly, her son Johnny died around 1980, too young, from a heart attack; maybe my grandparents helped her with expenses.

Thanks, from Aunt Helen

Alas, the Mt. Vee Motel is no more; the Southeast Fairfax Development Corporation paved the way (so to speak) for it to be demolished around 1998-99. In its place, an outfit called Ryan Homes squeezed 150 townhomes, 38 single family homes, and an assisted care facility onto the former motel site. No urban sprawl here!
 

On a side note, while checking up on whether or not the motel was still standing, I found some yutz who wants $10 for an unused, somewhat edgeworn copy of this postcard. Realistically, it might be worth a buck to somebody. Oh, and another $2 to ship it to you. I’m in the wrong business.

Visiting Aunt Helen in Lake Hopatcong, NJ, 1955

For entertainment purposes only. Do not use while driving.

This is one of many postcards that my Aunt Brenda picked up on our many trips to western Pennsylvania to see our extended family.

Nebraska: The Cornhusker State!

This card has it right: A never-ending flat plain, delineated only by Interstate 80. As the back of the card tells us, “Nebraska lives by its extensive sea of grain — principally corn, wheat and rye. More varieties of grass grow in Nebraska than any other state. Beef cattle and hog production are major contributors to the economy of the state. Nebraskans take unusual pride in their football teams, the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers have been consistently among the nation’s top college teams for many years.” Again, dead on: football is venerated there, far more so than in any other community I’ve ever seen.

This card was sent off to Aunt Brenda by my mom, who came to visit me with the rest of the family in 1987 while I was stationed at HQ Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base. She writes: “Hi, Made it here. Car over-heated in Iowa (in fact, they had left it there to be worked on and had gotten a rental to finish the trip to Omaha). Chris is fine. Went riding in his friend’s ‘63 Buick convertible. See ya soon.”

A note from Mom to Aunt Brenda

Efes (Ephesus)

This card depicts what is presumed to be the final home of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where Catholic tradition holds that she died.

I sent this card to my Aunt Brenda, who at that time was the keeper of the collection, in an envelope along with several other postcards. I was in Turkey courtesy of Uncle Sam, and was still in awe over the favorable exchange rates.

Personal message to Aunt Brenda, from me in Ephesus

The notation in the lower left — “her hakki mahfuzdur” — translates roughly as “every genuine(ness) looked after”, presumably the same sentiment as “all rights reserved”. The Turkish language is not for the squeamish. (Also of note: the word is correctly spelled “hakiki”, but the publisher has spelled it as it is actually pronounced.)

Efes is also the name of a pretty good Turkish beer, which sponsors a fairly mediocre basketball team, which has some really hot cheerleaders.

(Now how did I digress from the Virgin Mary to hot cheerleaders?)