Just for fun, I will frequently post a tweet or status update listing the destinations of my outgoing mail for any particular day. Today, however, in addition to some of the normal swaps and correspondence, I’m sending out the latest issue of Permit Patter, the newsletter of the Mailer’s Postmark Permit Club. Thankfully, the Club sends the materials and pays the postage.

Turns out that too much of anything can be a good thing: while I enjoy cancelling my own mail, I would not want soon to repeat having to do it nearly 200 times in one sitting. But the membership will know the joy of receiving mail cancelled with Gainesville, Georgia, Mailer’s Postmark Permit #1.

Today’s mail goes to:

Alabama: Theodore

Arizona: Sun City West, Tucson (x3)

Arkansas: Bryant, Rogers, Sherwood

California: Albany, Alpine, Chatsworth, Denair, Fort Bragg, Half Moon Bay, Lodi, Modesto, Northridge, Sacramento, San Diego, Stockton, Sunnyvale, Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Yucca Valley

Colorado: Broomfield (x2), Crook, Olathe

Connecticut: Berlin, Bristol, Enfield, Tariffville

Florida: Cape Coral, Ft. Myers (x2), Milton, Ormond Beach, Seminole, St. Petersburg (x3), Tampa

Georgia: Gainesville (that’s me!), Harlem, Powder Springs, Stone Mountain

Hawaii: Wahiawa (x4)

Illinois: Addison, Champaign, Chicago, Galesburg, Peoria, Rockford, Schaumburg

Indiana: Buck Creek, Muncie

Iowa: Iowa City

Kansas: Caldwell, Caney

Louisiana: Talisheek

Maine: Bangor, Greenville

Maryland: Annapolis

Massachusetts: Easthampton, Oxford, Weston

Michigan: Bay City, Cheboygan, Delton, Hazel Park, Munising

Minnesota: Bemidji, Rochester, St. Louis Park, St. Paul

Missouri: Birch Tree, Joplin, St. Louis

Montana: East Helena

Nebraska: Omaha (x2), Sidney, Virginia

Nevada: Henderson

New Hampshire: Contoocook, Epping

New Jersey: Englewood, Marlboro, Union

New Mexico: Albuquerque, Santa Fe

New York: Bronx, Farmingdale, Lake Clear, Liberty, Newark, Potsdam, Rochester (x2), Syosset, Owego

North Carolina: Cary, Sanford

North Dakota: Pembina, Warwick

Ohio: Akron, Canton, Chardon, Lakewood, Marion, Oberlin, Sidney, Solon, Stow, Warren

Oregon: Ashland, Newport, Portland

Pennsylvania: Bellefonte, Hughesville, Lemont, Mount Joy, Murrysville, Pittsburgh, Royersford, Spring Mills, Temple, Upper Darby, Valley Forge

Rhode Island: Newport

South Carolina: Columbia

South Dakota: Deadwood

Tennessee: Lawrenceburg, Portland

Texas: Atascocita, Austin, College Station, Garrison, Kilgore, Luling, Nome, Port Neches, San Antonio (x2), Silsbee, Sugar Land, Texarkana, Longview

Utah: Highland

Virginia: Alexandria, Colonial Heights, Falls Church, Herndon, Norfolk

Washington: Duvall, Kent, Seattle, Snohomish, Spokane, Tacoma

West Virginia: Moundsville

Wisconsin: Madison, Oshkosh

Today’s International Destinations: Don Mills, Ontario, Canada; Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico; Skopje, Macedonia; Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles; San Salvador, El Salvador; Madrid, Spain; Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK; North Walsham, Norfolk, UK; Tripoli, Libya; Vaivadai, Panevėžio, Lithuania; Minsk, Belarus; Moscow, Russia; Saint Petersburg, Russia; Brookfield, Queensland, Australia; West Hindmarsh, South Australia, Australia; Dordrecht, Netherlands; Guangdong, China; Brunnen, Switzerland; Kouvola, Finland.

After 10 weeks of wrangling with the United States Postal Service, I have managed to convince them that it is perfectly legal (and, in fact, covered in the Domestic Mail Manual) for them to issue me a permit that allows me to cancel my own stamps before mailing, instead of having them do it.

Why? Besides the fun of taking on a government which is ignorant of its own rules, I hate the new ink-jetted text that passes for a postmark nowadays. I’ve also noticed that I get one or two mailpieces a month from mailers that have their own permits, and one can actually tell when and from where it was mailed.

My cancellation device (an “indicia”, really just a rubber stamp ordered from a private manufacturer) arrived a couple of days ago, and I presented it at the Post Office for approval and received my permit. I am sure they were happy to see the back of me.

I am holding off on using it for now; I ordered some special postcards to commemorate the first day of use and am awaiting their arrival. If you’d like a snazzy piece of “First Day of Use” mail with my new postmark, leave a comment.

I’m not trying to sell you anything for Postcard Friendship Friday, but I’m sure that this salesman had a very compelling pitch.  This photo was taken around 1915 by a Georgia photographer with the delightfully alliterative name over Cicero C. Simmons, whose career spanned 45 years, until he retired in 1925 at the age of 68.  The picture was probably taken in Talmo, Georgia, which is a small town located along the old Athens Highway.

I picked up this postcard about five or six years ago at the Athens Welcome Center.

This is the first time I’ve posted a view of my own town; I can’t imagine why that’s so except that I have so many cards from everywhere from which to choose!  Then I realize that a card showing a view that I see almost every day will seem as exotic to one of my postcard friends as their postcards seem to me.

This is a linen postcard, probably from the early to mid-1940s, of what was then the United States Post Office and Federal Building in beautiful downtown Gainesville, Georgia.  It’s still the Federal Building today and is also the Federal Courthouse, but the Postal Service moved out some time ago.  Today, there are four post offices in Gainesville; the main post office was built in the 1970s, and there are two more (and newer) branch offices along with a very new and very large carrier annex.

You’ll note that there’s a sign showing that street in front of the building was US Highway 23; today, it’s a narrow, poorly maintained one-way local street that leads to the downtown square, but back then it was one of the main highways to Atlanta.  Oddly enough, just the other day as I was standing near this spot, a very elderly gentleman asked me for directions to 23 and I had to think for a minute — US 23 in this part of Georgia is usually referred to by its other name of Interstate 985.  It turns out that he didn’t want directions to 23 at all, but to US 129, which is one of the main roads through town — but apparently he first came to know it as US 23, and that’s how he remembered it.  (If you don’t live in the US, you should understand that our numbered highway systems are generally superb, but that the numbers shift from time to time depending on when newer, better roads are built, what roads the federal government has the facilities to maintain, and which politicians can funnel those federal maintenance dollars to their own districts.)

Here’s a modern view I took recently from the same vantage point.  Kind of makes you wish for the good old days, doesn’t it?  Maybe you can find some at the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday.

“Waterfalls dot the picturesque landscape of scenic North Georgia.”  That’s true; you can’t throw a stone around here without hitting a waterfall. “Pictured are Tallulah Falls, Toccoa Falls, Anna Ruby Falls, Amicalola Falls.”  Up at Amicalola Falls this last weekend, the grandsons participated in a fishing tournament for the kids, and Number Two Grandson, age 5, won second prize for the biggest fish in his age group.  Those fish were tasty, too. When I asked him what he’d won, he said, “Oh, it’s just a box with hooks and bait and stuff.”

You, too, can have a postcard from scenic North Georgia; just drop me a line and ask for one. As always, feel free to send me a postcard from where you live.  There’s usually at least one postcard leaving here most days thanks to Postcrossing.  Today’s a busy day; there’s a card from Number Two Grandson and half a dozen from me.

“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.

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.

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).

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:

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.

Fort Frederica (and the accompanying colonial town of Frederica) was built to defend the colony of Georgia from the Spanish raids that took place from 1736 to 1748. Spain still owned Florida at the time, and the lands between Florida and and British South Carolina were known as the “Debatable Lands.” Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, built and commanded the fort. In 1742, Oglethorpe and his men repulsed a Spanish attempt to retake St. Simons Island in what’s known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh, so named because the marsh ran red with the blood of Spanish soldiers. However, the Fort Frederica Association says that many of the British soldiers turned and ran at the sight of the Spanish, and that only seven Spanish soldiers were killed in the “battle.”

Here are some other tidbits from the association:

• Fort Frederica’s soldiers bathed in the early morning before the alligators became active in the river.
• The first lighthouse built on St. Simons Island, in 1810, was constructed from material scavenged from Fort Frederica.
• Frederica’s barracks also served as a jail for prisoners of war and at least one prisoner of conscience: Christian Priber, a missonary who urged southeastern natives to become independant of the British government.
• No one knows who was buried in Frederica’s burying ground, or even how many people were placed there.
• Slavery was originally prohibited in the colony of Georgia. In 1749, Georgia’s Trustees legalized slavery.
• The Georgia Trustees paid the passage fares for more than half of the original colonists, including those who were affluent.
• Though Fort Frederica was obsolete by the American Revolution, her remaining guns were shipped up the coast for use at Fort Morris, near Sunbury, Georgia.
• James Oglethorpe spent more time at Frederica than he did in Savannah.
• The last time it snowed on St. Simons Island, Georgia was in 1989.
• Two of the founders of Methodism, Charles and John Wesley, preached at colonial Frederica. Today Epworth By The Sea, a Methodist center, is located on St. Simons Island.
• Frederica’s first residents came from England, Scotland, Germany, Swizerland, as well as Creek Indians of the Yamacraw tribe.
• During colonial times in Georgia, Frederica’s residents hunted and ate alligator when food was scarce.
• Frederica’s soldiers manned posts along the coast of Georgia including forts at Darien and on Cumberland Island.
• John Houston, one of Georgia’s delegates to the Continental Congress, was a native of Frederica.
• Frederica’s soldiers attacked the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida in 1740. The Castillo is also a National Park Service site.

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?

Toccoa Falls is located on the grounds of Toccoa Falls College, a Christian college just outside of — you guessed it — Toccoa, Georgia. Here is a view of the falls today:

Many of the trees in front of the falls no longer exist. Many of them were probably destroyed in a flash flood which occurred in 1977, caused by a dam failure upstream of the falls, and which killed 30 people.

Today, one must go through a visitors center in order to access the falls, for which the college charges a nominal fee. Across the street from the visitors center is a beach of sorts — a pond in which the students can swim. A sign near the pond reminds female students that two-piece bathing suits are prohibited. Lead us not into temptation.