Quote Originally Posted by RealityCheck View Post
Among my few dozen vintage postcards is one sent to Detroit a week before Thanksgiving 1908. It inspires thoughts about social networking via pens, paper and postage during that era B.C. [[Before Computers).
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What's not fiction is that I hold something each of them held 101 years ago. The image side shows Syracuse University, my alma mater, so I bought it at a flea market. Now I wonder how it wound up there, possibly after sitting for many decades in a Stuart family closet, trunk or attic somewhere in this area.
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Sitting at a desk without a fountain pen, ink bottle or postcard stamp, I think about young Rose, young Robert and this form of one-to-one social media that left an artifact to display where we indulge a similar interest in communicating . . . connecting . . . correspondenting. .
Reality,
This is one of my favorite things about the hobby of collecting old Detroit postcards. I have, probably, close to 1,000 of them. While true "postcard collectors" prefer unused, unposted cards, I love the ones with the stories. Like you, whenever I get a new one, I sit and wonder what the conclusion of the story was. I have thought several times about creating a branch of BuildingsofDetroit.com dedicated solely to sharing these pieces of people's lives. I thought it might be fun to have people submit their takes on the stories and what happened. Maybe you'd be interested in starting one with me?

Two of my favorites:
http://callmequami.livejournal.com/151962.html
Rose writes to someone in Orrville, Ohio, in August 1923:
"This is the city I would like to live in. Having a glorious time. - Rose"
Who was she writing? Her parents? Did she leave the small family farm in Orrville for the big city and fall in love with the place? Maybe it's just a relative, and she was living in Chicago or New York and found Detroit more to her liking. And, perhaps most importantly, did Rose ever move to Detroit, fulfilling the wish she wrote on this card?

http://callmequami.livejournal.com/164776.html
"Is this where you buy your boose"
What was going through Claude Eager's head when this crazy, cryptic, unsigned postcard of the Rickel Co. plant showed up in his Howell mailbox? Who sent it? Was someone calling him an alcoholic? And what the hell is "boose," anyway?

Another one that I haven't scanned is of the D.A.C. and eastern Grand Circus Park. On the back of the card, a small girl, Matilda, I believe her name was, writes in pencil in a child's script informing her friend that, "Yes, my mother says you may come over to play." Sure, you might wonder what they played with - or when the friend knew she could come over. But what I find most fascinating about this card is a glimpse at a time before telephones made play dates a simple thing to arrange. That a child - judging by the handwriting, maybe 5 or 6 years old - would choose a postcard of the D.A.C., of all things, to write her friend and tell her to come play dolls or hopscotch or whatnot.