Wild Postcards

This engineer is having a nicotine fit.

“The Engineer is often praised / By passengers and crew. / He always makes his record runs, / When he needs “Happy Thought” to chew.”

Clearly someone needs to stage an intervention. He doesn’t just want some chewing tobacco, he needs it, and is willing to risk the lives of his passengers in order to get it more quickly.

Someone called “FCT” gave this to Great-Grandpa Phil, probably not later than around 1905. She writes, “Hello honey suckle.” I don’t know who FCT is, but she is not my great-grandmother.

Phil, you sly dog.

This is the gate to...?

I wish I were able to discern some text on the pillars or sign shown in this RPPC. I tried scanning this card at resolutions of 2400 dots per inch and up but, unfortunately, the resolution of the photograph itself isn’t nearly that high. Where does this gate lead? A park? A private estate? A cemetery, perhaps?

The stampbox on this card indicates that it was manufactured between 1905 and 1908; the fact that the card has an undivided back (meaning that the back is for the address only, and that any message was to have been written on the front) further implies that it was made before March of 1907, when divided-back cards became legal.