There are so many ways to communicate with each other today it makes you wonder how we ever did without them. We are instantly connected together in real time, any time we want. Sometimes that's a good thing other times not so much. We have Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and many other variables at our disposal. It makes good old fashioned texting seem outdated. Does anyone really talk anymore? It seems a lot easier and painless to just send a quick pic or a sentence to keep in touch with each other. That seems to be what its about. Staying in touch. The need to interact with each other. To find out what the other is doing or to announce what you are doing. It could be a close friend or someone you would want to know better. Almost always its part of your family that you spend the most time keeping in touch with. Well maybe. There are still some holdouts from the older generation that will probably never give any of this stuff a try. It's good to laugh though and probably the biggest joy of the modern era is the fact that humor in every twisted form usually makes up most of our wireless efforts.
Let's go back though. What did people do before the age of the Smartphone? Unfortunately I can remember a slice of this prehistoric communication deficient time period. It was called the 70's. A time when if you wanted to talk to your buddy you peddled your bike to their house and saw them face to face. That of course was after you stood outside and yelled for them to come out. The good old house phone was another gem. Ours seemed to be in the middle of the house with a four foot cord on it. So if you had any conversation at all everybody in your family heard it also. This made it especially tough when planning things with your buddies that you didn't want your parents in the know about. It was also a bit cumbersome when talking to a girlfriend. It was sort of like a party line but thats another story...
The need to connect and communicate has been with us since the beginning of time. Indians carved rocks and colonist wrote letters. I must admit I have never been a letter writer. I corresponded with a couple of friends when they went off to the Marines but thats about it. As I grew older technology grew also. It became easier to stay in touch. I never gave it a second thought. Until that is when I got married. I met a woman by the name of Pauline Huston. She happened to be my wife's Grandmother. She was old school so to speak. Always sending cards. Cards for everything. Birthdays, Anniversaries, every holiday, and of course thank you cards. Beautifully hand written thank you cards telling us how nice it was to be invited to our house for dinner or thanking us for the Christmas present we gave. She also wrote short little notes on how things were going with her as well. She loved birds so the majority of her cards were adorned with paintings of birds. She was awesome. She lived over one hundred years here and was a genuine lady through and through. Years after she was gone I had an opportunity to go through some of my wife's family photos and history. Boxes of things that were saved by her. Old photos of family members and their farm that dated back to 1850. One of the things I ran across were old postcards that were wrapped in ribbon that she had saved. Hundreds of them. Most mailed from Indiana to here. Some mailed from here and somehow wound up back here. They were apparently saved over the years as reminders of family members through the generations that lived out of the area. Many of the wives of past generations were from Indiana. They married and moved here and corresponded with family back home.
Back in the early 1900's about the only form of communication was the U.S. Mail. Only the very wealthy had telephones in their homes. Most farms barely had running water or indoor plumbing in house let alone a telephone. Keep in mind however you didn't "dial" a phone yourself an operator did it for you. For a small cost you could send a short note to your relatives anywhere you wanted to let them know how things were going. Much like we do today only it took several days to a week to get your message to them. Most mail went by horseback out to a train depot in a nearby town. By far the easiest and quickest form of communication was a postcard. A fancy picture or satirical image could be had for one cent and another penny to mail it. Postcards were not only sent out they were collected as well. At that time they were sometimes bought just to have the picture or photo of a local attraction to show to visitors in your home. Many postcards were kept in folders in the parlor to show friends and neighbors. The fad however came to a slow end around 1913. Telephones and movies captured the imaginations of the general public and the rest is history.
Some of the most elaborate images on postcards came from printers in Germany. Striking colors and embossed cards were the envy of all that could afford them. All of these cards were produced before World War I and usually had the Swastika printed somewhere on the card. Swastikas were a symbol of good luck long before they were adopted by Nazi Germany. Although I must admit it is kinda of creepy to see this symbol on a card depicting happy times and good fortune. American printers could not match the quality of these cards. Eventually the American printers caught up and along with tariffs added in 1909 to the import cards things changed dramatically. World War I also had a part in shutting down the German presses. Actual photographs of local events and landmarks began to take the popular sales trends of that time and sales trends began to change. It didn't take long for printers to figure out that they could save ink by putting a white border around their cards but still charge the same price.
Here are some samples of what I ran across.
The St. Clair post office is located in Fredericktown near the old iron bridge. This is how it looks today.
Pauline Huston long before she was known by all of us as Grammy. Very glad she had an eye for a good post.
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