Pre-Owned Wish You Were Here: Arkansas Postcard Past, 1900-1925 (Paperback) 1557284512 9781557284518

In Turn-of-the-Century America, wish you were here was an often-penned phrase used on the backs of postcards that had been purchased for a few pennies and mailed with a one-cent stamp. The picture postcard craze produced countless thousands of images from everyday life -- new schools, crowded main streets, storefronts and interiors, fields of harvest, churches, families, trains, resort spas, fires, and floods. The examples presented here -- taken from a valuable collection of over five thousand postcards amassed by brothers Steve and Ray Hanley -- offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Arkansans during the early part of the twentieth century. Many of these scenes have appeared, since 1986, in The Arkansas Gazette, and now in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, as the popular daily feature Arkansas Postcard Past. The 431 diverse images are supported by substantial captions, which add historical details and often include the messages of love, sickness, friendship, and intrigue written on the backs. Deltiologists will appreciate the completeness of the collection, as almost every town and hamlet in Arkansas is included, and many of the postcards are rare, even one-of-a-kind. In this wonderful photojournal, the authors offer a nostalgic look back into Arkansas's cultural past -- to a time before world wars were numbered, before economic depression had struck, before space exploration and the technology explosion, before the state's rivers were dammed, before most roads were paved, and when almost every small Arkansas town had passenger rail service -- a time often referred to as the good ole days. It also confirms that although the peripheries of human society have changeddramatically during the century, the central motives and interests of people have remained much the same.