Once upon a time, starting in 1879, there lived a cartoonist named Walter Wellman. He was not a cartoonist yet when he was born, in 1879, that is to say. He probably wasn’t allowed access to ink until he was able to crawl around and grab it./ Anyhow, he was one of those cartoonistsContinue reading “Dr. Cupid”
Tag Archives: Postcards
Broad Humor
I wrote a whole book once of jokes singled out for their absolute omnipresence, what a layperson might call “old jokes”, or, if they were people were as old as the jokes, “chestnuts”. The book was presented in the form of a quiz: if the jokes were really all that stale, you would beContinue reading “Broad Humor”
Bygone Wishes
One of the things people do not talk about when studying serious history are the little pleasures and customs of life which have faded away. This is left to people who write mere nostalgia: a loving look back on such disappearing pleasures as the key you had to use to open canned meat orContinue reading “Bygone Wishes”
Fish Story
Seventy years ago this spring, general Douglas MacArthur made his famous address to Congress, in which he reminded everyone that “Old Soldiers never die. They just fade away.” Though he was not the first to express the thought (it apparently comes from a song parody of around World War I) he made it hisContinue reading “Fish Story”
Go Fourth
If I have scared away my readership with the previous blogs this week, I now have a nice private moment to do something I was fairly certain I would never do. There will thus be no witnesses, giving me plausible deniability if someone says “I saw you were reminiscing about the Fourth of July.”Continue reading “Go Fourth”
Such Is Life
“Mister Farmer! Mister Farmer! How is it that your cow there has no horns?” “Well, Ma’am, cows and their horns are an interesting subject. Sometimes a cow never grows horns at all. The scientists are still working on why: it may be the Good Lord just never meant that cow to have ‘em. Continue reading “Such Is Life”
Grin and Bear
I hope what I wrote in Monday’s column could not be construed as suggesting the donkey (burro, jackass, etc.) served only one purpose in the postcard of midcentury vintage. The donkey appeared regularly on postcards in many roles: at the beginning of the twentieth century he appeared as a sometimes patient, sometimes recalcitrant beast ofContinue reading “Grin and Bear”
The Means, The Ends
There are some jokes which appear over and over in the postcard world, and bits of wordplay that seemed to leap from cartoonist to cartoonist and company to company. There is the amorous golfer (want to play a round?), the tourist in the ice cream parlor observing how broadening travel is, the little brownContinue reading “The Means, The Ends”
2-D Celebrities
I thought today we might just glance at three celebrities who can be remembered by heir postcards. Each was responsible for a lot more cultural baggage than that: bits of our language, tie-in merchandise, musical history, and all that. But even at that, they are nowhere NEAR as big as once they were. Continue reading “2-D Celebrities”
Vital Vittle Volumes
Since you asked, I will answer, but we MUST get back to postcards one of these days. But being a blogger and thus not shy about sharing my opinion, I will pass along some thoughts on Iconic American Cookbooks. This is not a Top Ten because I haven’t got room for ten and, anyhow,Continue reading “Vital Vittle Volumes”
Blogsy Babbles 