Two postcards purchased at Griffis Grocery in Lawtey, Florida

The past five weeks have been a whirlwind, as you might imagine. In the midst of everything else that I've been dealing with, my 190,000-mile vehicle was mortally injured by miscreants¹ while it was parked in the public garage at my workplace. The extent of the damage is such that it doesn't make any sense to put money into fixing it up and removing all of the poorly-drawn phallus graffiti from the sides and the hood.

So I had to remove my belongings from the car in advance to driving it to the salvage yard. The last thing I discovered was in the glove compartment — the two vintage postcards that I purchased in February 2016 at a tiny grocery store [pictured above] near Lawtey, Florida.²

Here's what I wrote last summer about the store:

"To be clear, though, Lawtey isn't a ghost town. It has a population of about 700 and has been well-known in recent times for using a speed trap on U.S. 301 as a source of local revenue. I stopped at a tiny grocery/antiques store called Griffis Grocery ... and purchased a bottle of soda and a pair of early 20th century postcards from a sweet old woman who told me she was legally blind."

The postcards went into the glove compartment on that day and came out yesterday, as I was emptying the Ford Taurus in preparation for its farewell.

So here's a look at those two postcards. I think I'll use one of them for Postcrossing and retain the other one as a keepsake of that afternoon driving through Lawtey.

R.R.Y.M.C.A. Building, Brewster, Ohio
That stands for Railroad YMCA. The Brewster Railroad YMCA/Wandle House, located on Wabash Avenue in Brewster, started as a railroad dormitory constructed in 1916 by the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway. The building now houses the Brewster-Sugarcreek Township Historical Society Museum and The Station Restaurant.

Chalmers Motor Co., Detroit, Michigan
Short-lived Chalmers Motor Company was established in 1908, struggled with business after World War I, and merged with the Maxwell Automobile Company, forerunner of Chrysler, in 1922.

Footnotes
1. Hooligans, vandals, juvenile delinquents, mischief-makers, hoodlums ... kids who should have been inside reading books.
2. You can see the grocery store's sign in this 2011 post on The Goat.