Ringing in the holly-jolly month with a vintage Christmas postcard

Somehow, December returned.

We're now in the Yuletide countdown and the countdown to 2026, so there will be some holiday-themed posts sprinkled across this month, even though it's 70 degrees today in the Sonoran desert.

Papergreat has featured more then 200 posts themed "Christmas" over its decade and a half of existence. I haven't actually updated the directory since 2000, but this post will get you to dozens upon dozens of past posts, if jingle bells are your jam.

Today's postcard is a Whitney Made card that was postmarked at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve in 1915 and mailed to Clara Hoff of Berkeley, California. The short cursive note on the back states: 

Dear Clara

I wish you all the good things your stockings can possibly hold.

Mrs. Schneider

The image on the front of the postcard features Santa Claus holding up a lantern so he can double-check his list while on someone's porch. The message states:

I'LL BE THERE TO-NIGHT

SO TURN DOWN YOUR LIGHT

HANG UP YOUR STOCKING

AND CLOSE YOUR EYES TIGHT

The idea that you're not supposed to see Santa Claus is a superstition that has persisted through the decades. When being interviewed for the Dartmouth Folklore Archive in 2021, 18-year-old L.M. stated:

“Me and my younger cousin Mallory every year had an app on our Mom’s phones called Santa Tracker. We would track Santa while he was flying around delivering presents around dessert time to make sure he wouldn’t come to our house before we were asleep because we wouldn’t get any presents. Santa’s not going to give you any presents unless you’re in bed and asleep. If you weren’t in bed when Santa came it meant you were naughty and got Coal in your stocking, that's what our Moms told us.”

A pair of mystery snapshots

Today we have a pair of small old snapshots. Found photos for which the stories and histories are no longer attached and may never be reunited. First up is this snapshot, which is 2¾ inches wide by 4½ inches tall. It shows a woman in what appears to be a bathrobe standing in mostly dirt yard with a child. A dog lays in the background, near a gate. 

The writing on the front states 1924 and "Marie & Caroline."

The names also appear on the back, where the date is now June 1925, one full century ago.

That's it. We don't know where this is, whose scrapbook it came from or what ever happened to Marie & Caroline.

This photo, just 3½ inches by 2½ inches, features a couple reclining in a bed. There's a cursive caption on the back, but it doesn't help us with who they are or when this was taken. It states: "Here is our bed. We were going to be silly but that is what the head of our bed looks like."

If I were forced to make a guess, I'd say this one was taken sometime in the 1940s or 1950s.

Upon closer examination, the photo is a little weird. At first I thought maybe it was taken from outside, through a bedroom window that caused some reflections. But upon closer examination I realized it's a double exposure. If you look closely, you can see the faint image of another woman to the right of the woman in the bed. No, it's not a ghost. Definitely a double exposure. Possibly of the same woman. I miss the days when I might have excitedly claimed it to be a ghost photo, though.

I've had a ton of mystery photos and mystery real photo postcards on Papergreat in the past. Alas, there's no single directory of all of them, but one good place to dive in, if you're interested, is this 2021 post.

Shades of Clark Ashton Smith

I had the high (only?) bid on this thing at a recent fundraising auction to help folks recover from early autumn flooding in Miami, Arizona, my favorite small town that I've discovered since we moved here in 2021. 

Now the thing sits on my bookshelf. 

It reminds me a little bit of the eerie sculptures of Clark Ashton Smith, which I wrote about in 2017.

Also, I've read enough paranormal short stories and seen enough episodes of "Night Gallery" — not to mention those episodes of "The Brady Bunch" with Hawaii, the tiki idol and Vincent Price — to realize that I'm now cohabitating with a cursed object, and I should probably tread very lightly.

Sci-fi book cover: "Roller Coaster World"

• Title: Roller Coaster World
• Secondary cover text: "Their world was dying of madness"
• Author: Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005)
• Cover illustrator: Frank Kelly Freas (1922-2005), who was known as the "Dean of Science Fiction Artists," according to Wikipedia
• Publisher: Ace Books 
• Publication date: July 1972
• Pages: 173
• Format: Paperback
• Price: 75 cents
• Teaser blurb on first page: Once upon a time there were people who had asked for an electrode to be inserted into their brains to stimulate the pleasure centre. Then they had starved to death experiencing the ultimate pleasure. The law had outlawed that pretty game. Did the Exisensis call on forbidden lore to give their brand of pleasure? Would being number one in the Exsensi business bring him pleasure? He was concerned over the pleasure it would bring; it was a drug he craved and he meant to taste it somehow.
• First paragraph: He thought he could get in a couple hours of sleep before they removed the last of the city. Sleep wasn't too important; but it was as well not to neglect it. He stood for a moment by his bed making up his mind which Dream to programme, unable to choose between the offerings on the catalogues of Dream-a-Scheme and Snooze-a-matic, finally deciding on one of the old faithfuls from Dial-a-Dream.
• Last paragraph: "I feel weary," he said. He looked at Shari as she crouched over him, empty of tears, as they flew above a new planet that had no need of artificial stimulants. "I feel so tired," he said. "Isn't it wonderful?"
• Sexism/objectification-of-women rating: Moderate to high.  
• Excerpt #1: Marsen looked surprised. "I didn't think anyone looked at tv anymore." "Very few do. It's a dying medium." "Why bother with it?" asked Flora, craning her head to look up against the reflected light where the transportation crews hung in their antigrav control units. "Excess is so much more fun." "News are current affairs are regarded as ephemeral. When R returns to power," commented Wormleigh, his face composed, "there will be many changes."
• Excerpt #2: This man Wormleigh both fascinated and repelled Marsden. "I understood R subscribed to the views of Hobbes," he said, probing. "As Leviathan says, one must subsume the rights of individuals into  the right of the sovereign — if I have that right." Wormleigh faced him. "R is developing a philosophy of government. We await from day to day fresh resolutions. All pre-atomic and pre-googologic systems are in decay."
• Excerpt #3: The landslide victory of Leyden's party had been shaped by means that Marsden did not inquire into with any strictness. Corruption as a means of acquiring power had long ago been invalidated; but there were other means. He was an assemblyman, a member of government, and his duty lay plainly before him.
• Excerpt #4: They didn't bother to call in on his screen. They simply opened up his personal keyed-lock with a sonic-pick and bashed the door down. They jumped into his apartment, spraddle-legged, tough, leather-clad, wearing crash helmets and visors. Between them they were armed with a motley collection of weapons — sporting rifles, target shooters, one man had an aralest. The only thing the weapons had in common was — they all pointed at Douglas Marsden's chest.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.25 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2012, Toby wrote: "Surprisingly enjoyable for Kenneth Bulmer's books. A bored, burnt-out athlete/socialite's quest for meaning in a decaying society full of unproductive hedonists."
• Rating on Amazon: 3.9 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2022, M Carley wrote: "I don't read a lot of sci-fi, so maybe this is normal, but I wish there had been more focus on the unique aspects of the world and the way the cities moved from place to place. Up until the end of the book, it just seemed like the book was about Doug and his job/love issues. It had potential, I just wanted more sci-fi I guess."

1907 Thanksgiving postcard

Happy Thanksgiving. There's a lot to unpack in this 1907 postcard published by The Rose Company. Let's start with the illustration on the front. At the top, there's a golden crown. Underneath the crown is a turkey. And the turkey is standing on a shield that has the design of the United States of America's flag, over the top of which is printed these words:

Europe has its turkey

Asia has the same

But the turkey

of America

Is King ~

of all the game

With the crown and the turkey and the pro-America message this card hits in some disconcerting ways in 2025, but that's all my personal projection based upon our current moment with kings and "turkeys" and America First.¹

If I had to speculate, I'd say this is a fairly harmless Thanksgiving postcard that's being a bit playful in touting American exceptionalism during an era when the United States' global power was rising. If anyone has any insights or alternate interpretations of this card, I'd love to read them in the comments.

There are cursive messages on both the front and back of this postcard, which was sent from Newton, New Jersey, to Lowell, Massachusetts, in late November 1907. The message on the front states:

Did you know Mr Hiles [?] has the Typhoid Fever?

Someone having typhoid fever in 1907 would have been a serious medical issue. Though mortality rates were on the decline at that point, thousands of Americans were still dying of the disease. Within just a few years, though, sanitation measures including water filtration, chlorination and pasteurization tamed typhoid's spread, and the military was using a proven vaccine to protect troops in high-risk areas.

The note on the back is a rather perfunctory:

Dear friend:

Rec'd your postal and hope you think of me again real soon. Thanking you for same.

Previous Thanksgiving posts

• Public service announcement that's still relevant
• Bettina's Thanksgiving in the country (and more meal suggestions)
• Nostalgic school bulletin-board material for Thanksgiving
• Three colorful vintage Thanksgiving postcards featuring turkeys
• Stock photo of pilgrims and a dead turkey from a 1940 magazine
• 1971 Thanksgiving gift edition of Ideals magazine
• If you still need a Thanksgiving dessert, make some strawberry pie
• I'd blame the tryptophan, but cat pileups like this happen every day
• 1950 Thanksgiving ads
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Happy Thanksgiving: Enjoy vintage anthropomorphic vegetables
• Thanksgiving postcard from 1914, plus a little guffaw

Footnote

1. I had a whole rant forming in my head, but I'll be good since today is a holiday. My head is spinning, anyways. I'm not sure if we're barreling toward a repeat of 1789, a repeat of 1933 or some new mixture that future historians simply refer to as "shades of 2026."

Unintentionally unsettling eBay listing

I did a double-take and then uttered a deep sign when I saw that these two vintage mid-century books being offered together on eBay were titled And So the Wall Was Built and A Story That Has No End. Hits a little too close to home these days. 

RIP, Tatsuya Nakadai

Japanese film legend Tatsuya Nakadai died earlier this month at age 92. "Film legend" probably doesn't do him justice. He has, arguably, the greatest actor's filmography of all time, of anyone anywhere. He's in the conversation, anyway. And acting in movies wasn't even his greatest passion. According to his obituary in Variety, "Nakadai considered himself to be a theater actor first, and the most acclaimed work of his later years came onstage, leading productions of 'Death of a Salesman,' 'Barrymore' and 'Don Quixote.' He played Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Richard III throughout his career."

Nakadai essentially played Shakespeare's King Lear, too. In the West, he is perhaps most well-known for the role of elderly warlord Ichimonji Hidetora in Akira Kurosawa's 1985 masterpiece Ran, which is a retelling of "King Lear." Nakadai was only 52 when he performed the role, and in my opinion should have been nominated for an Oscar.

The author Japanonfilm wrote this of Nakadai in 2021: 

"It is striking how often Nakadai was cast in critical roles by the very best Japanese directors of his time – not even [Toshiro] Mifune made so many great movies. ... Directors felt Nakadai was a star, even if the Japanese audiences didn’t. Nakadai was the lodestone of all Kobayashi’s great films, but he also was consistently cast by Kurosawa, Okamoto, Gosha, and Ichikawa, and the results were usually among the directors’ finest work. ... Though Mifune is the giant who made Japanese movies popular in the rest of the world and the unchallengable king of film charisma, Nakadai is the genuinely great actor of his era, arguably the greatest in the history of Japanese film."

Another essay about Nakadai that I recommend is this 2009 piece by Chuck Stephens on the Criterion.com website.

Here's a list of some of Nakadai's greatest films. I'm looking to make up for some serious oversights by watching High and Low and Harakiri in the coming days. Also hope to track a few more of these down for future viewing.

• Seven Samurai (1954) small, uncredited role; but he was there 
• The Human Condition trilogy (1959, 1959, 1961)
• When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
• Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960)
• Immortal Love (aka Bitter Spirit) (1961)
• Yojimbo (1961)
• Sanjuro (1962)
• Love Under the Crucifix (1962)
• The Inheritance (1962)
• Harakiri (1962)
• High and Low (1963)
• Kwaidan (1964)
• The Sword of Doom (1966)
• The Face of Another (1966)
• Samurai Rebellion (1967)
• Goyokin (1969)
• Portrait of Hell (1969)
• Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (1970)
• Inn of Evil (1971)
• The Wolves (1971)
• The Human Revolution (1973)
• I Am a Cat (1975)
• Kagemusha (1980)
• The Battle of Port Arthur (1980)
• Ran (1985)
• After the Rain (1999)
• Lear on the Shore (2017)

The actors Peter (playing King Lear's Fool) and Tatsuya Nakadai in Ran (1985).

Postcard: "To find the pot of gold"

This vintage F.A. Owen postcard features a full rainbow over a bucolic small town and has this bit of verse:

How oft as children we try,

To find the pot of gold;

That rests beneath the rainbow's tips,

And doth such treasures hold.

The postmark date is mostly obscured. I think it's from the 1910s, though.The card was postmarked in and mailed to Sandyville, West Virginia, an unicorporated community in the northwestern part of the state. Its most notable structure may be the Sarvis Fork Covered Bridge, which dates to 1889.

The postcard was mailed to Miss Genevieve Owens. This is what the cursive note states, to the best of my deciphering skills:

Hello Girlie:-

how are you? What are you doing these nice days? Why don't you come up and play with me? I am busy all the time. Can't get time to take a visit, nor even ride the ponys if I had a chance. I am homesick to see you, and hope I shall soon.

No name is signed. As far as the addressee, there was a Genevieve Owens who lived from 1928 to 2018 in that general part of West Virginia, but I'm not sure if it's the same one. And it would put my postmark guess way off and mean this card was from the mid 1930s or later (which I suppose is possible).