{"id":267,"date":"2010-10-08T22:10:48","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T22:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tmcldev.wpengine.com\/mcgovern\/2010\/10\/08\/writing-home-selections-from-the-texas-hospital-postcard-collection\/"},"modified":"2022-03-30T18:38:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T18:38:01","slug":"writing-home-selections-from-the-texas-hospital-postcard-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/2010\/10\/08\/writing-home-selections-from-the-texas-hospital-postcard-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Home: Selections from the Texas Hospital Postcard Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alethea Drexler<\/strong>
\narchives assistant<\/em>
\nThe McGovern Research Center’s collection of postcards of Texas hospitals has been online for quite a while, and can be accessed through our website<\/a>.\u00a0 Our postcard images<\/a> are arranged alphabetically by town, and you can see scans of both sides of the card.\u00a0 Most cards are still blank on the back, but some have messages.\u00a0 If you haven’t seen them, I would encourage you to take a few minutes on your lunch break and browse, as they are quite interesting.
\nMost of the postcards with writing are remarkably alike: Either begging the recipient to write, or thanking him or her for having done so, commenting on the weather, assuring them that everyone is fine.\u00a0 Mostly, they are very short, although a few individuals with supernatural powers both of eyesight and penmanship managed to squeeze in entire paragraphs of tiny, yet legible, script in the few square inches of space that the back of a postcard provides.\u00a0 Believe me, I’m impressed.
\nI was looking through the postcard boxes for another project and decided to post some of the messages on this week’s blog post.
\nSome are purely descriptive.\u00a0 This one from the state tuberculosis sanatorium near San Angelo, taken in the 1920’s, reads: “The first girl on this row is my roommate Bessie Smith.”\u00a0 No, not that<\/em> Bessie Smith, obviously, but I guess being on a postcard is a minor form of celebrity (I once made the cover of my college’s course catalog.\u00a0 Does that count?).
\nTuberculosis<\/a> was once a serious public health concern<\/a> in the United States and hospitals devoted to its treatment were common.\u00a0 The sanatorium near San Angelo functioned as a near-self-sufficient colony, with a dairy and workshops.\u00a0 These girls are sleeping on a porch: Fresh air, even in cold weather, was part of the treatment in the\u00a0 days before antibiotics.
\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bessie Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nA young lady wrote to her friend in Dallas in 1911: “How are you, little pet?\u00a0 Hope you are fin[e] fat & saucy.\u00a0 You must write to me dear.\u00a0 Don’t you wish you were in one of these auto’s?\u00a0 Bye bye your friend . . .”\u00a0 The car at far left is an early Buick<\/a>.\u00a0 We have older postcards of the Hot Well Sanitarium that are almost identical, except that they have horses and buggies outside.\u00a0 Apparently the Hot Well was eager to be seen as modern.
\nMany of our postcards have fanciful color schemes.\u00a0 I’ve seen the same building colored red in one image, then white in another.\u00a0 I’m a little skeptical that the Hot Well Sanitarium was ever painted pink, white, and lime green.
\n
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The latest in automotive technology, 1911.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nI don’t think the lady who addressed the card below was a patient at Lubbock’s West Texas Hospital because she noted that “we stayed across from here xmas eve”, but she wrote to her mother in Austin in December, 1928, to say: “Rec’d the fruit cake today “Wed” As soon as I got it unwrapped I cut myself a slice.\u00a0 It surely did taste yum yum.\u00a0 I was tickled pea green and pink to get it.\u00a0 I am glad it’s larger than the one last year.\u00a0 Cause I wanted more last year.”
\nThe longevity of fruit cake is a running holiday joke now, but it was a popular item to send through the mail at least as far back as the mid-nineteenth century because the fact that it was traditionally pickled in alcohol prevented it from spoiling in the days before overnight express.
\n
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Nutty about fruit cake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nSome seem to be tongue-in-cheek.\u00a0 Gene sent this card to San Antonio in 1939 with the line: “This is the best card in the City of Rusk.”\u00a0 I don’t know if he was that happy with his treatment at the Rusk State Hospital<\/a>, a prison-turned-mental hospital, or if he was being facetious.\u00a0 I think it was probably the latter.
\n
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The best postcard in Rusk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAnother wag who identified him- or herself only as “K” told the Cook family in Austin that s\/he was “Doing Paris in an automobile” for the Fourth of July, 1910.\u00a0 Paris, Texas, that is.\u00a0 I wonder if there really was an automobile involved; even Paris, Texas, by automobile would have been a novel excursion in 1910.
\n
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An exotic getaway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHealth spas built around hot springs or mineral-water wells were very popular in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries.\u00a0 Even Jane Austen’s characters go to Bath<\/a> (named for, yes, Roman baths) to drink the water.\u00a0 Carl wrote from Mineral Wells<\/a> to his mother in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1917: “am sending you one gallon of concentrated mineral water.\u00a0 Should be at Wells Fargo Exp office by the time you get this card – use as directed.\u00a0 Think it will be good for you and the kid both.\u00a0 Am feeling some better.”
\nConcentrated<\/em> mineral water?\u00a0 Does that mean you have to add . . . water?
\n
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Just add, um . . .<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nMary, writing from the Wood & Wood Sanitarium in Hubbard, in 1912, was less impressed: “There is a well connected with this Sanitarium which is recommended for most every thing.\u00a0 It ought to be helpful for it is bad enough.\u00a0 I drank it once<\/em>.”
\nAt least the building is lovely.\u00a0 One might feel a little like Scarlett O’Hara with those big Ionic columns.
\n
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Where's that spoonful of sugar?<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nA few of the messages sent home are quite sad.
\nGracia wrote from the North Texas Hospital<\/a> (in either 1908 or 1918; the postmark is incomplete): “This is where I am living in the same old way.\u00a0 Bug house life.”\u00a0 The black-and-white photograph, evidently taken in the winter when the trees were bare, provides a striking visual.
\n
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Resignation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThis one of the imposing Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio has nothing on the back but notes: “Where Lula passed away, Mch 24th 1905-”\u00a0 Apparently whoever wrote it wanted it as a memorial.
\n
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Lula, 1905.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThis one from 1907, which is another image of the North Texas Hospital in Terrell, has a bit of a poem based on a familiar old song<\/a>:
\n“Be it ever so humble,<\/em>
\nThere is no place like home.<\/em>
\nI meet every train for sister,<\/em>
\nBut she doesn’t come.”<\/em>
\nThis makes me think of a the book Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards<\/a><\/em>, which is a collection of short stories based on found postcards.\u00a0 There’s got to be a good story in this one.\u00a0 And maybe a country song.
\n
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No Place Like Home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAnd the last one is one of my favorites.\u00a0 There are a few postcards that are not written in English.\u00a0 I found one today that I had not noticed before and figured out, with the help of Google, that it was in Croatian.\u00a0 I didn’t expect to find this, though:
\nThe back is typed in red ink: “Kara Kunfrato; Mi ricivis la unuan numeron de Int. Medicino sed ne la lastan; mi plezure prunteprenos gin de vi.\u00a0 Mi konas Dro. Dillon sed li ne estas Esperantisto.\u00a0 Mi penis varbi lin por la movado sed ne povis.\u00a0 Skribu al li pri Esperanto.\u00a0 Du estas pli fortaj ol unu.\u00a0 Skribu ankau al via Kongresanoj pri House bill #22o kiu koncernas Esperanto.\u00a0 Salutoj,”<\/em>
\nYes.\u00a0 It’s in Esperanto<\/a>.\u00a0 It was sent from Lewis, Kansas to West Branch, Iowa, in 1912.
\nRoughly translated: “I received the first numeral [volume?] of Int. Medicine but not the last; I happily will borrow [gin?] from you. I know Dr. Dillon but he is not an Esperanto speaker. I endeavored to recruit him for the movement but couldn\u2019t. Write to him about Esperanto.\u00a0 Two is stronger than one. Write also to your congressmen about House bill #220 which concerns Esperanto.\u00a0 Salutations,”<\/em>
\nI was unable to find anything of note about House Bill 220, so it appears that the United States was never gearing up to adopt Esperanto as a national language.
\n
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What the . . . ??<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alethea Drexler archives assistant The McGovern Research Center’s collection of postcards of Texas hospitals has been online for quite a while, and can be accessed through our website.\u00a0 Our postcard images are arranged alphabetically by town, and you can see scans of both sides of the card.\u00a0 Most cards are still blank on the […]<\/p>\n

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