Postcards have been part of my life for years. Anyone reading this space knows this. The year 2008 focused on postcards, as I mailed one a day. All that year I was discouraged by the number of responses, and had written about this in my newspaper at the time (as well as frequently kvetching to friends and loved ones.)
On Dec. 5, after lunch, I returned to the newspaper office and on my desk found a bundle of postcards left by my friend Peter Marbach.
Peter is a photographer whose images have appeared in books, magazines, posters, and in my newspaper at the the time, the Hood River News, which transformed into Gorge News in 2020.
Peter and I were becoming good friends at the time, but I had watched his career as a photographer and author, going back to his iconic Mt. Hood Jazz Festival poster images in the 1990s; I’m proud to still call him my friend.
With the postcards Peter left a brief note reading "for your collection." For me these three words are a historic and beloved refrain. Others have sent cards to me with that message, and the trove of postcards that inspired me since childhood, the hundreds owned by my father, contains many that say that as part of the message, written by one of his aunts, family friends and others who traveled; many had scrawled upon them no message except for “for your collection.” My father was collecting postcards at age 10 or so; his father died in 1937 when he was 12, and Dad and his mother and sister had a farm to take care of, so there was no travel for them.
Peter’s cards are Oregon mountain, coast, and Gorge scenes. Peter's timing was perfect, for I had almost run out of scenic cards. I had plenty from my miscellany, and a few unique ones I planned to send, but this new supply of scenics, bearing photos taken by a friend, spurred me in the final month of the postcard year. Peter's gift gave the endeavor a renewed personal feeling, for not only was I sending beautiful cards but they had been given to me in the friendly spirit of postcard correspondence I have long felt. Peter's packet truly underlined that spirit.
In 2008 I wrote: “It is Dec. 21, first day of winter, a good day to take card stock. For the year, I have received 38 responses to my postcards. This includes three emails, two letters, and five cards from people who responded to two columns I wrote about sending postcards.
“All these early December cards, and the first one from Roger Blashfield in July, were in response not to postcards I had sent but to my writing about postcards. People responded in force to the concept of writing, and I was gratified they felt inspired to initiate postcard contact.”
Personal contact is the whole deal behind postcards for Roger. He and his wife, Linda, would become close friends of ours but in December 2008 I would have no way of knowing this. I had not yet met Roger and Linda, though by the latter part of 2008 Roger and I had exchanged numerous cards. He was nearing retirement as a college professor and planning a move to Hood River. Initiated by his postcard response to one of my columns on the subject, a great friendship was forming.
Roger Blashfield, Hood River, Ore., 2018, holding an oversized postcard, c. 1930s, from his collection. Such issues are hard to find now.
Since 2008 collectively we’ve exchanged an estimated 3,000 postcards. News, quotations, questions, commentary, they run the gamut. Mostly we use contemporary cards but both of us have troves of old or period cards that was use or reuse. (Some weeks Roger will send me 5-7 cards; I honor him with batches, though not as often.)
I would receive an old, repurposed, postcard from Roger on April 8, 2024, of Banff Springs Hotel, Banff National Park, printed c. 1920. The century-old card is fascinating to regard. It’s a poorly colorized print, even for its time, the grand crenellations of the hotel standing in stark white like captured in some gigantic flash photo. Beyond are barren brown hills that appear denuded, and a painterly set of surreal clouds. (Those hills strike me as looking like the Cascade foothills near Hood River wracked by wildfire in 2017.)
Roger’s message on the card hits on an interesting aspect of many cards I’ve inherited and collected. “This card may have interested someone who went to Canada, stayed at this posh hotel, put card in scrapbook, died, scrapbook sold.” He writes this across a layer of brittle paper with ragged edges, long ago glued to the card. Peeling back the layer short of tearing it or the card, it does appear nothing was ever written on the card. I’m not sure where Roger acquired the card, but I sense he is right, and that layer of old scrapbook paper is a poignant emblem of the passages and journeys postcards take – are destined to take.
I’ve written similar messages on postcards, upon the surface of an old scrapbook page, including ones recently from Szeged, Hungary, and Karlovy Vary, Czechia, ones my parents had purchased in their travels and brought home, affixing to scrapbooks. Those scrapbooks have been passed down, and are family treasures. In a few cases I have removed the postcards, believing that the postcards were ultimately meant to be posted, not preserved. I’ve done the same to postcards from Israel I removed from my own scrapbooks. Postcards run in the family.
Then there is the other category of card in my possession: “Please Save”. The phrase carries emotional power similar to “For your collection”: a sentiment of the moment, yet lasting. Part 2, soon … – N.R.