A supply of the necessary?

E.C. Patton album, cards 8-11

Still early days in this album, but some interesting cards so far (images and/or messages). Four more cards for today.

I’m not sure of the sender, whether their signature is the bottom center scrawl or the letters on the right side. The message comes through clear enough, however.

“Thanks for Oregon’s capitol we’ll need one (perhaps?) suppose you heard about the Political Graft trying to remove ours to Berkeley. Ha! Lots of excitement here now. I’m patiently waiting for that letter”

[unclear] to E.C. Patton, 2 March 1907

The reference to the letter suggests these two may send each other cards (and perhaps both collect) but also have additional connections and/or reasons to communicate. The card was postmarked Sacramento, so the sender likely lived or had affiliations with California’s capital (enough to look dubiously on efforts to move it).

Next up on where the message is harder (for me) to decipher–but the image is clear enough. It’s the first card from outside the United States (it won’t be the last).

As for the message, here’s what I’ve made of it so far:

“Please pardon this delay I was awfully lazy. Yes that is where Mont[?] gets its supply of the necessary if the Chop Suey is anywhere take what you get near[?] Chinatown. Not for Mine of Cause its Sleepily Affluent and at the Copsfr[?] dont you think so? W.R. Faulo[?] 3/7/06″

W.R. Faulo[?] to E.C. Patton, 3 July 1906

The reference to where Mont (presumably Montreal) getting the necessary is in response to a previous communication–which leaves one wondering what necessary the sender is referring to. Water? Liquor? or something else? I didn’t really make much sense of the rest. I’ll try again at another time.

It was postmarked Montreal, by the way, and the postmark date matches to July 1906 not March (the sender used the DD/MM/YY style of date rather than the United States preferred MM/DD/YY).

For this next, I can say only that although the image is of New York City, it was postmarked in Toledo, Ohio, with nothing to indicate who sent it.

I do have a different album (and collector) where I was nearly all the way through the album before I realized that the nearly blank cards bearing only two scrawled letters other than the name/address/postmark were sent by the person to whom the album belonged to herself. She was a collector who evidently gathered some of the cards on her own. I’m not saying that’s the case here (I have NO evidence whatsoever of this) — rather I’m mentioning this as a reminder that sometimes cards make no sense when one first begins to work through an album only for realization to dawn down the road.

That written, I’m not expecting anything with respect to this card.

And now that I’ve turned myself in circles, on to the last card for the night. A card from Japan! If you’ve read the last post, you know E.C. Patton’s family spent two years in Japan while he was in his teens. The card may come from someone he knew then, or someone who moved there after. Given the name, they’re likely American or European rather than Japanese, but we’ll see what else shows up.

And that’s all for now. Return for some more pretty cards–and analysis–next time.

“A supply of the necessary,” copyright 2021, Alea Henle.