Went to a flea market this weekend and found some wonderful vintage postcards. I couldn’t resist and bought these two:

The surfing one is postmarked from 1933 — when Hawaii was still a territory!

I think the most entertaining part of rifling through the cards was reading what people wrote on the back. On the back of the surfing postcard, it’s written, “It is quite a sport if you know how to perform it.”

Or this postcard with a scene of the Cliff House at the San Francisco beach on the front:

11/14/30

Dear S. –

Yesterday I saw several seals on these rocks.

Love Father

This one written on a Dearborn, Michigan postcard from 1943 is amazing:

Dear Phoebe,

Just a bit to tell you Mark(?) called on the phone this morning. He is on a diet now. They hope to taper him down to around 190lbs and he is quite happy about it. He isn’t confined to bed, so if he just relaxes he can enjoy it to some degree.

As ever,

Anna

Also, these cards printed from the early first half of the 20th century can sometimes have excerpts on the backs that aren’t meaning to be funny but they are. For example, one of the postcards from Baltimore is described as, “…a city charmingly picturesque in its ugliness, yet seething with activity and opportunity.”

Or this one that has the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco on the cover: “In cozy nooks about the grounds visitors are served tea and delicious rice cakes by dainty Japanese maidens.”