🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 8 May 1993 11:46:31 -0400 Harry Rusche said:
>It occurs to me to ask if anyone else has found interesting autographs or
>messages on their cards.  I have a friend who showed me a card mailed from
>Vienna where the writer was complaining that her trip had been marred because
>all they could talk about in the city was the assassination of some Duke in

  Nothing quite as exciting as the killing of Archduke Ferdinand, but
since I am collecting libraries, for the most part, I'm particularly interested
in what they say about the library.  I have quite a few sent by librarians
to other librarians, particularly early in the century when libarians
were apparently also caught up in exchanging postcards.

  I have a number of small town libraries sent by businessmen on the
road with comments like "Dear <wife>, This is the town I am in tonite
and here is the library where I have been reading all evening."  Really?
I imagine that some really were, but that others may have been out
doing other things.....   o-)   Same for cards of college libraries from
students, usually like "Dear Mom and Dad, here is where I spend three
hours every evening and most of the day Saturday".  Again, I bet some
are accurate and some are less than fully honest.

  One of my favorite non-library cards is of a State Institution for the
Criminally Insane.  It is addressed to a relative in another state and
says something like "Dear Cousin Joe, Aunt Susie died here last night.
Wanted you to know.  Love, Cousin Sam"   I've always wondered at the
indignity of sending a death announcement on a postcard instead of in
an envelope, and in that era in a black bordered "mourning envelope".
I have also always wondered whether Aunt Susie was a patient/inmate of
the institution, or whether the bad taste of sending a card from that
town was compounded by sending THAT particular card by chance or necessity.

The stories that we will never know.....


dan

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* Dan Lester                          Internet: alileste@idbsu.idbsu.edu    *
* Boise State University Library      Bitnet:   ALILESTE@IDBSU              *
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