We have discussed in this space before the matter of the classic grade school Valentine, and how it related to postcards. I have nothing new to say about this, but I DO have a couple of new postcards along this line, so I thought we’d revisit the proposition.
For those of you who had NO friends as a child (or who went to a progressive school which banned Valentines on the grounds that it led to competition and bad feelings), the classic grade school Valentine involves a bright picture, and a bit of wordplay relating it to the holiday. A big clown face might be accompanied by “I’m not CLOWNing around – I want you for my Valentine” or a fold-out dachshund might say “I’m LONGing for you to be my Valentine!” The capital letters were necessary to punch up the joke (unlike the example here, which not only has those tracks but the easily missed play on “bears investigating” and “bear’s investigating.”)
A person cannot live on Valentine’s Day alone, so this same basic form was transferred to postcards, which did allow a little extra space for more words.
This was an especially easy job when, as with the Valentines, you had the same basic message to push out on dozens of different cards. So it was a natural for the very popular “Why haven’t you written yet?” postcards. This was also a nice break from the Valentine lines because you could draw frowning faces, something that was not considered useful in the grade school Valentine.
And artists who produced mile after mile of cute animals and cute children could actually draw grown-ups doing grown-up things.
Note to self: someday, when you lose all reason and start to buy up bales of old school Valentines, see if there are as many that deal with fishing as there are postcards. Also consider the question of whether artists themselves would rather be doing something besides leaning over a drawing board, especially when the fish are biting.
Oh, it’s true: sometimes the adults don’t look that much older than the kids on the Valentines. But if you check the fine print (on his T-shirt) you can see we are dealing with an adult here.
In the postcard format, there was room for landscape art, if that was something you yearned to do.
Or if your skills in goofy creatures went beyond, say, bunny rabbits and seven year-old policemen or nurses, you could spread out and show that, as well.
And on a Valentine for seven year-olds, you didn’t get to try your hand at pin-up art. Sure, the JOKE is just as bad as any on a Valentine, but at least you were getting a little variety.
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