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Postcards on the edge
Published: 8/6/2012 11:30 AM
Last Modified: 8/6/2012 11:30 AM

It was quite some years ago, but I remember the conversation vividly. My father and I were a local post office, and when the clerk asked if there way anything else he could do for us, my father replied, “Yes, I’d like a dozen penny postcards.”

The clerk stared at my father for a moment, then laughed appreciatively. “I’ll bet you do.”

As I remember, this conversation took place when 12 cents would barely pay for the postage needed to send a 4- by 6-inch card through the mail.

For most people – myself included, I must confess – sending postcards, regardless of the cost of postage, is a thing of the past. This simple form of communication has been replaced – overwhelmed, in fact – by all manner of electronic missives: e-mail, instant messagings, phone texting, Facebook postings, Instagram images.

To buy a card, then actually take the time to sit down and WRITE something – with a pen, even, can you image – and THEN to go to the post office and wait in line (which, if you believe a current television advert, is absolutely the worst thing that can ever happen to you….wars, famine, pestilence, death, that’s all child’s play compared to waiting in line at the post office) and pay MORE money to have it transported days later to its destination…..well, what 21st century techno-savvy consumer would want to go through all THAT hassle?

Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, writes about the lost art of postcard writing in a new blog post at the New York Review of Books website. And it reminded me of the times when I did try to send postcards to friends and family during my admittedly limited travels to rather mundane places. Even if the place from which I was sending the card wasn’t all that memorable, I did try to come up with a message that would maybe get a laugh or raise a brief smile from its recipient.

These days, postcards are primarily used for direct marketing, which is probably another reason why people don’t take the time to write and send cards anymore. We shuffle through the mail looking for the bills, for envelopes that look official or that might possibly contain rebate checks, for magazines and catalogs. These are the things we think of as important, because they involve money in some form or another.

The few words of a friend or a loved one – whether quickly scribbled down or painstakingly drawn into the small open space of a postcard – we too often dismiss as an afterthought, a curiosity, rather than one of the more personal forms of communication we have at our disposal: Words, written by hand onto paper, sent from one place in the world to another.

And on a lighter note, the first few minutes of this scene from the "Jeeves & Wooster" TV series is a series of postcard-type missives Bertie Wooster sends back to his valet Jeeves as he follows an acquaintance, who's landed a part in a musical, around the USA while on tour.





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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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