1 March 2010
The very last thing I did before bidding adieu to the first day of March, was to finally rescue my grandmother’s postcard collection.
Pictured here, you can see just two of sixty or seventy pages of postcards dating from 1927 through the early eighties. And, as you can clearly see, the old school scrapbook pages are yellowed and even brown with age, quietly degrading the postcards as the acid leaches from one paper into the other. I gained possession of this scrapbook in the year 2002, when I made a journey to the Northeast and visited my aunt and uncle and five cousins who live in Maryland. Grandma spent the last couple of years of her life, living at their house, since her eyesight was all but gone and caring for herself far away in Pennsylvania had become difficult. They had kept a few of Grandma’s belongings since her death, in a box with my name on it. The postcard scrapbook was one of those things.
I wasn’t expecting this inheritance—it was a complete surprise. I can only imagine that Grandma must have remembered my own scrapbook and thought I would enjoy having hers. While she was alive she had given me some dishes and a couple of small, prized, sentimental possessions—a scarf Daddy had sent her from Germany when he was in the army, the invitation she had kept from the capping ceremony for the young woman who would soon be her daughter-in-law and my mother, and the little worn velvet box she kept them in. I knew she wanted me to have her old treadle sewing machine, and once upon a time there had been talk of giving me part of the collection of horse figurines she had carefully placed around her living room. And, she was an amazing quilter, so I had received a beautiful heirloom quality quilt upon my first marriage. But, the postcard collection had never been mentioned.
I looked through the book when I got it, but frankly its importance then was overshadowed by a couple of other items I had not been expecting—a tiny dress that had been my grandmother’s as a little girl, and a very old, very large framed photo of some ancestor that sadly, we cannot identify. Those items spoke to me—the postcards were just neat. Who knows why they seem to mean so much more to me, now?
Perhaps it is because with every passing year, we realize a bit more, just how truly blessed we are by each of our experiences. I know how longingly I gaze upon the photos and memorabilia of my own days gone by. My recent hours of scrapbooking my own college years and in so doing, sorting through photos of my childhood and young adult life, have been a precious walk down memory lane. I now imagine how my grandmother must have felt as she flipped the pages of her red scrapbook full of travel souvenirs.
I can imagine her excitement at receiving a postcard in the mail—her sense of wonder awakened by the sights she’d never seen. I imagine she would quickly turn the card over to see who had thought about her during their travels. She’d smile at the name. She would read the note, read the description of the card, and then turn it over again, eyes perusing every detail of the picture upon it. Then, she’d take it back inside her home, and go get the red scrapbook. She’d find the page where this new card belonged, and carefully place the little corner tabs on all four corners of the postcard. She’d lick them all one by one, and press the newest addition to the collection into its own special place on the ivory page. I imagine she’d sigh … then, turning to the start of the book, she would enjoy each page of it, again, as though basking in the company of a dear friend.
She apparently started this collection as a young woman. The earliest postcard seems to have a postmark of June 21, 1927. The illustration (not a photo) is titled “Moonlight Scene On Basin, Coshocton, Ohio” and depicts a fabulously romantic full moon reflecting on water. The postage was 2 cents and the card has no note. It is addressed only: Miss Marie Blake, Uniontown, Pa., and in the same hand, it is signed only: “G.W.” My father never really knew his father, but his name was George.
This is the only card so old—the dates seem to jump to the 1950s then, and the cards are from her two boys as they traveled during their time in the army. And some of the most recent cards seem to be those she received from my own brother and me on family trips in the late 1970s when she wasn’t along with us. By the mid-eighties, her eyesight would have made the red scrapbook a difficult, bittersweet pleasure, and many modern cards were simply tucked inside the back cover of the book.
Many of the postcards represent trips she herself took. I know that, because in some cases, not only is the back of the card blank, but it is from a place I traveled with her. She accompanied us on many a family vacation—California, Florida, Michigan. And, she was a part of a very active seniors group that always seemed to be getting on a bus and going somewhere in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Indiana or Maryland.
Many, I daresay most of the other of the cards in the book, though, represent the travels of friends and family that were outside her own experience. Cards from far off places like Hawaii, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia, which she has carefully labeled “?eskoslovensko” because that is what the printing on the card itself says. And, oh, yes—every different place of origin has a label—carefully printed in her own hand and “scotch” taped into place at the top, center of the new page. I taught my grandmother how to print the letters of the alphabet. I know how proud she was of that skill. When I was a young girl learning to write in cursive for the first time, she told me that was how she learned to write. I was amazed and in awe, because I was very excited to finally be learning “handwriting.” But, she confessed that she had always wished she could write more “like a typewriter.” I gleefully took on the assignment of teaching her to print, and we made the lesson last an entire summer.
I adored my Grandma Gribble. She always lived too far away for us to spend much time with her, but from the time she learned to print, we wrote letters back and forth to each other constantly. She would alternate Christmases between my family and my cousins—and a for a few weeks in the summer she’d sometimes come and stay, always using my bedroom, because I insisted. One perfect summer when I was a preteen, I went to her house and spent a whole week —an eight hour drive from my brother and my parents! It was a glorious time for us, and proved to further cement our bond. It was the summer I was sixteen, I believe, when she was visiting us in New York, that she decided it was time for her and me to get our ears pierced! My folks had not been in favour of the idea when I’d brought it up for myself, and it was something she knew she’d always wanted. So—we did it! And, we told the parents after the fact!
All these thoughts of her are at the surface of my mind, now, having handled all these things that represented memories for her. It is a bit sad to be letting go the physical book—but, an intervention was necessary to ensure the postcards themselves would continue to survive. I have placed them in modern, pvc-free sheets, and I’ve taken photos of the old scrapbook. I hope I’ve done the right thing. I certainly did it with love.
~MB
