The story of the cards
January 10th, 2012Last summer I ignored, for several days, a sketchy poster board sign hung on a boarded-up building a block away: “yard sale inside, knock on door.” Every yard-sale-loving cell in my body answered the call with a quite certain “yeah right, and DIE.” Until the day that… I went inside. Very end of the week, sign had been up for days and days with no reports of murder in my small, happy neighborhood. Door was hanging wide open, normal-looking people were loading things out of the building onto a truck.
So I wandered up. Was greeted at the door by a very enthusiastic old man who told me the story of this former pharmacy – closed down many many years ago, but the building was boarded up rather than being sold. Now the family was finally clearing things out to make the sale. The inside was like a fossil record of the 80s and beyond. There were some other normal-looking yard sale patrons paging through books. The guy shooed me inside and begged me to take things. He said he’d give me a deal.
Over an hour later I emerged victorious. And really really, dirty. Like, I went home and showered kind of dirty. Feeling a little guilty and like I had just committed some kind of yard sale robbery, but also sure that my grandpa would be proud of the price I paid for my haul, and positively giddy about my treasures.
For part of a sweltering hot Friday afternoon, I sat on a grimy chair in this grimy room and pawed through grimy boxes full of pristine greeting cards that were older than me by decades. They were amazing. I drooled. I fawned. I sorted out two boxes of the ones I wanted. What for? I didn’t know. I was completely consumed with the wanties. They were going to go in the trash the next day. There were hundreds and hundreds, most in multiples. They were almost entirely packaged neatly in flat, brown paper envelopes, reorder tickets sticking out of the tops. No bends, no creases, no fading, no de-glittering or de-flocking. The vellum was beautiful and crisp. They were all stock that had never been put out for sale.
I emerged into the sunlight with two big boxes of greeting cards. And then again with a box of lovely antique cameras, plus a couple of 70s Kodak gems (most have been gifted – I kept one). And then a box full of half-empty, ratty scrapbooks, which I devoured to learn a little of the family and the past of my town. On top of that last box was a super-ratty quilt, which lives on to enjoy outings onto the grass to listen to music and be sweated / bubbled / hummused on by happy, dancing children.
All told, I had paid the guy a sum so small that I can’t admit it here, even after fighting him and rounding up to something above “really fancy Starbucks coffee drink.”
So the cards. What in the hell do I do with hundreds and hundreds of beautiful vintage greeting cards? Aside from use and gift, I came up with two solutions. Some I will sell on Etsy. They have been in plastic totes for half a year because I felt a little guilty doing that. However, practicality wins and the first batch will be up shortly. Beyond that, I am scanning all of them and making them available for download here. They are all uploaded in their original size, for graphic taking and crafting in whatever way you are able. There are many, many more to be added to that set, so check back often.
The people who owned the pharmacy were German. They had a nice collection of cameras, mostly German as well. They were good photographers. The man – the pharmacist – had two doctor brothers, both lived in Florida. They took a lot of photos of snow. They sent Christmas cards. They baked cookies from stained, handwritten recipes. They rode horses on Kingwood street. The women had excellent taste in clothes, but, alas, were not my size.
Enjoy.
Listening: Nick Drake pandora (probably for the rest of “winter”)
