The modest little box of post cards collected by my grandmother in the early 1900s doesn't look impressive. Most of the cards are yellow with age, some are bent or have torn corners, and the faded writing is hard to read especially when the post mark is stamped boldly across the message.
At first glance the tattered post cards decorated with holiday greetings, photographs or cartoon like characters on one side and a short message and address on the other, seem quite ordinary. A more careful look combined with a bit of family research has transformed these little pieces of cardboard into a time machine. I have suddenly become intimately connected with people I've never met and places I've never been.
Through the power of a post card my grandmother's childhood world is alive again with aunts and uncles, cousins, friends and best beaus telling their simple stories about country dances, winter storms, mountain rambles on horseback, and new baby brothers.
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