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Discover Mid-America — May 2004

Confessions of a collecting slouch

An antique shop owner in Calistoga, Calif., once asked me if I collected anything. I shrugged. Having moved six or seven times in the previous year, I’d essentially pared down to the essentials. Henry David Thoreau would have been proud of me, but I could tell that the shop owner was stunned. We moved on to more jovial topics, but he called to me on my way out the door.

“You’d better get collecting! It’ll improve your life!”

Hazel’s last postcard to Miss Virginia before heading home.

I’m more settled now and many possessions have accrued. But as collectors go, I admit to being a first-class slouch. The only thing I collect seriously now are the state guides published by the Federal Writers Project in the late 1930s. Even these are a raggedy bunch: only two are first editions and few have their dust jacket under a proper plastic shield. The rest are battered library copies and paperbacks reissued decades later. I’m aware that with a credit card and an Internet connection I could have an immaculate collection thrown together in a week. I prefer to come across them on the way, which gives each book a story of its own. This has improved my life. It also brings complications.

Passing the time in a shop on Main Street in Jonesborough, Tenn., I came across a wire display rack of old postcards and gave it a whirl. One card was from the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., a landmark with much significance in my personal geography. Every year, my parents and I would travel the 90 miles from Sioux Falls to see the headliner take the Corn Palace stage at the annual Corn Festival. This was the one time during the year we had access to big name entertainment: Victor Borge, Rich Little and Tennessee Ernie Ford not once but twice. Sometimes my brother and his wife or my grandparents would also come along which meant a classy dinner afterwards at a steak house or Chef Louie, probably the only restaurant in the state at the time to serve frog legs. They were a little dry, so I tended to stick with the shrimp.

The year Bob Hope played the Corn Palace, Barbara Eden opened for him with a high-stepping song-and-dance revue. I even got to shake her hand after the show. At this point in my life, I’m most impressed with the fact that I got to see Bob Hope do a full hour of stand-up. At the time, as one of the many drooling, adolescent fans of “I Dream of Jeannie” I can say that, had we hit the ditch and died on the way home, I would have left this vale of tears with no regrets.

Which is the long way around to saying that I plucked the Corn Palace postcard out of the rack. To my surprise, it was addressed to a Miss Virginia Williams of Johnson City, Tenn., and bore a post date from the summer of 1962. Someone named Hazel and Leo had stopped to have a look at the Palace and pronounced it “interesting.”

Hazel and her husband Leo were on a big trip that summer. From the other cards in the rack, and there were quite a few, they started west just after the Fourth of July. I picture them in a classic American roadster with white wall tires. Leo sports a crew cut and smokes filterless cigarettes. Hazel has on a scarf and a pair of cat-eye sunglasses. They’re not sure how they feel about this Kennedy fellow but they were going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Along the way, while Leo compulsively checked the oil on the Buick, Hazel would dutifully drop a card to Miss Virginia, who might have been a daughter or a sister or a friend from church. From the general nature of the messages it was hard to tell.

They passed through Paducah and St. Louis and Kansas City before turning north toward Omaha and Sioux Falls. From there they headed west again for the Black Hills on through Wyoming, Montana and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Leo would occasionally tease Hazel, “We’re gonna run plum outta money, all those cards you’re sending.”

The date on the last card in the series is August 16, 1962. The postmark “Banff, Alberta” is stamped over two four-cent stamps with a young Queen Elizabeth on them. A tranquil picture on the reverse shows a young woman in a pink dress looking out at Lake Louise. Instead of the few generic lines, the card is filled with Hazel’s cursive, shrunk down to make all the bad news fit.

“Last night Irving called saying Daddy in hospital critically ill - but they thought we should continue our trip as he had improved some...Then this a.m. Leo received call that his brother-in-law (Ruth his only sister) died in San Mateo, Calif. Then we were torn as to what to do.”

And so within two days of arriving at Banff, they headed for California and the funeral of Leo’s brother-in-law. The day after the funeral they would head for Tennessee hoping of reaching home in time. “We hope and pray Daddy will continue to improve. Much love, Hazel.”

This is the card I bought, for 50 cents. I’ve had qualms about the decision ever since. Perhaps I should have bought the whole collection, especially considering the fact that Virginia Williams had kept the cards together for so long. This would have set me back almost twenty dollars, which does seem like a lot of money for old postcards from one stranger to another. At the same time I felt that some memento of that summer trip should be preserved, should survive. So I’ll hold on to this card and consider myself improved.

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