Real Postcards Delivered in the Mail

Postcards are fun to send and receive. I’m talking old fashion, hand written, stamped, and drop in a United States Mailbox kind. If you’re confused, there is a Wikipedia entry for postcard. Yeah I know the arguments in favor of sending e-cards with animated whatsits, but compared to the genuine mailed, handwritten kind, postcards sent through email are totally souless. The beauty of postcards is that they are unexpected, and in most cases a welcome oddity amidst the bills, junk mail, store catalogs, and legal summons that clog most mailboxes. Of course, there will be the friend or relative who will call in a panic wondering why you mailed them a postcard. You just need to reassure them that the card isn’t coated with anthrax and is intended as a friendly “hello.” Back when I was in college, a friend who favored higher learning on the road would send me handmade postcards made from staple-posted placards ripped off of phone poles or made from a local brew’s cardboard six-pack packaging or the front cover of a paperback he finished reading and had tossed from the freight car he had jumped to get the hell out of Omaha. Back then, the USPS was more tolerant and actually abided by the maxim, “With proper postage, we’ll deliver anything.” Another friend had gone to his local copy shop and ran off postcards with his crudely-drawn map of North America with his family’s road trip drawn in. So then, while on the trip, he would grab a pres-stamped card from the bunch and draw a bold X at the spot where they were and jot a ditty about the trip on the message/mailing side. I received three or four of these cards, which provided a fun progress report. Recently, I sent a very cool postcard purchased from redbubble.com, an online art gallery and community where you can buy postcards, to a writer / publisher friend. He wrote about what I sent on one of his blogs, which was extra neat to see.