Wild Postcards

River Street, Savannah, Georgia

“Once the site of frantic activity of a thriving cotton port, today the renovated buildings along the waterfront house a multitude of shops, taverns, restaurants and craft centers.” Definitely a nice place to visit; we get down there every couple of years. This card is one of a dozen brought back to me by misguidedkid, who recently visited there himself. Published by Dixie Postcards.

Is that you, Albert?

No, the scan isn’t out of focus; the postcard is. If I were manufacturing postcards, I would endeavour to make sure that my photos were a little more crisp.

The postcard reminds us that Okefenokee Swamp Park in Waycross, Georgia has “many forms of wildlife (including) huge alligators in natural haunts.” When I saw the card I was sure that this was Albert from Walt Kelly’s Pogo comics.

This is a “Plastichrome” (number P8768) by Colourpicture Publishers, Inc., Boston 15, Mass. It looks like it could have been printed yesterday.

"Old" Infantry School Building, Fort Benning, Georgia

This is a beautiful Curt Teich linen postcard, number 8A-H2001, published in 1938 — apparently when this building was still pretty new. GlobalSecurity.org has the story of how this school and post came to be:

On September 18, 1918 the Adjutant General directed that the Infantry School of Arms with all personnel, property and equipment move to Columbus, Georgia by October 1, 1918. The first troops from Fort Sill arrived on October 6, 1918, and occupied a temporary camp three miles east of town on Macon Road. The next day the camp was officially opened. At the request of the Columbus Rotary Club, the camp was named in honor of Confederate General Henry Lewis Benning, a Columbus native many thought was the area’s most outstanding Civil War officer.

The search for a permanent location for the camp settled on a plantation site south of Columbus owned by Mr. Arthur Bussey. The Bussey land featured the kind of terrain considered ideal for training Infantrymen. The plantation would serve as the core of the camp, and the large frame house, known as Riverside, would serve as quarters for a long line of commanders.

After years of struggling for appropriations and attention from the makers of Army policy, Benning enjoyed a construction boom in the mid-1930s as a result of federal work projects during the great depression (sic).

Nowadays, this is the “old” Infantry School Headquarters, according to Cultural Resources Management at Fort Benning; it is now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Tomb at Fort Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia

This is a Curt Teich reproduction (number 38800-N) of what was originally a Curt Teich linen postcard, original production number unknown. Unfortunately, the dates of reproduction cards are not as well documented as the first runs; all I can say for sure is that the card was produced prior to 1952, as the stampbox denotes one-cent postage. The Georgia State Archives has a card from the original run:

Old Tomb at Frederica (Linen Card from Georgia Archives)

Unfortunately, they don’t list the production number and don’t have a scan of the back of the card for me to see the number; with the number, a few minutes of research would reveal the original publication date.

My card (the newer one) has a varnished finish on the front, but I hesitate to call it a photochrome postcard; the paper appears to have almost as much rag content as a typical linen card. It also looks as if, to make the new card, someone took a pair of scissors and cut the white border from an original card; the edges of the picture on mine are uneven.

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Aspiring Models

This is a “Lusterchrome” postcard, number K-6218, by Tichnor Bros., Inc., Boston 15, Mass. The card has some post-production stamped text on the back reading “Greetings from Jekyll Island, Georgia” — no doubt where this card was originally sold — but it’s unlikely that this is where the photo was taken. This card is unused and in pristine condition.

Is it just me, or do the men appear to outnumber the women in this photo by about 37 to 1? And where are the bikinis?