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Babies Do These Things

Another cute and cuddly creature assigned certain jobs on comic postcards was the baby. For the purposes of our discussion, these are children too small to walk or get up and use the potty, for, as noted above, they were frequently assigned some of the same jobs as the cat and especially the dog.Continue reading “Babies Do These Things”

Cats Do These Things

Once upon a time, when I was in college, I listened in admiration to an earnest conversation between a couple of young women on the differences between kitties, cats, and kittycats. I don’t remember all of the points discussed, but I should like to make the point that postcards of kittens are a wholeContinue reading “Cats Do These Things”

Dogs Do These Things

Animals played a big part in the world of postcards. In an earlier era, when the only real air conditioning available at night was an open window, a light sleeper could be acutely aware of the dogs and cats which roamed the streets at night, and the chickens your neighbior kept in the backContinue reading “Dogs Do These Things”

Back to You

This week we have considered the postcards which were published so that you could nag your friends to write to you as well as those cards which were printed to apologize for not having written. Because sending postcards came as naturally to those generations as texting and tweeting does to us, there was aContinue reading “Back to You”

Catching Up

The Arms of Krupp, a massive volume, lumbered onto the bestseller lists in 1968. I was a wee bit younger then, and not afraid of large numbers of pages, and what I took away from William Manchester’s riveting tale of a family that manufactured arms and armor for centuries was my admiration for aContinue reading “Catching Up”

Responsibility

We’ve discussed this before: the postcard was a twentieth century text message. For a few pennies, you could send a brief note across town in a couple of hours. The postcard companies knew what you were doing, and provided cards which came with pre-written sentiments which would start the message for you so youContinue reading “Responsibility”

Stolen Sweets

I’m sure people do these things today, but they sure did them a lot more often in that other world I visit, the world of the Postcard Craze of 1908 or so. Young men slipped out after curfew to exchange a few words under the girlfriend’s window, women put pies to cool on theContinue reading “Stolen Sweets”

Beery Ballads

At this point in my career, I suppose it is unlikely that I shall ever be invited to give my lecture on Victorian Adaptations of New Communications technologies, in which I discuss, briefly, Thomas Edison’s career in pornographic phonograph records. It is not the best known of his inventions, but Thomas Edison was theContinue reading “Beery Ballads”

Fifty Years Agone

I was trundling through the Interwebs, considering things to blog about, and reflected that although I had glanced at 1921 in search of things to commemorate, I had not looked to 1971. I do things like this. I decide on the research, figuring “What’s the worst that could happen?” The worst that couldContinue reading “Fifty Years Agone”

Selling the Fizz

So it went from a mild over-the-counter medication to something people wanted banned. Well, yes, that happened to cocaine, too, but I was thinking of another product, which took longer to make the transition. And along the way, it slid its way into our culture in many ways, SOME of which can be illustratedContinue reading “Selling the Fizz”