Tag: postcards

“Dear Mother, Am feeling fine, as hard as a rock and as brown as an Indian”: More Postcards from the US-Mexico Border Circa 1916

It’s a hazard in rare book nerderie: the ephemera bug bit me! I’m just back from the Center for Big Bend Studies Conference at Sul Ross State University in Alpine (Far West Texas), where I presented on “John Bigelow, Jr.,” about which a longer post is forthcoming, but in the meantime, fresh from that book fair with its bodacious selection of ephemera, herewith, thanks to Galvan Creek Postcards, a few additions to my burgeoning collection of Texas postcards from the era of WWI and the Mexican Revolution:

“ARMY MANEUVERS ON THE MEXICAN BORDER”

Postmark:
MARFA, TEX
OCT 10
 2PM
1916

TEXT:
 hellow Jack
how are you I am fine & dandy.
Well I rec your letter
OK but I am still in the war
Well regards to all Your friend LB [?]

Jack Hendrix
Medicine Mound
Tex 

“BORDER DUTY ON THE RIO GRANDE” (REVERSE BLANK)
“MOUNTED SCOUTS; THE WAGON TRAIN”

Postmark:
EL PASO, TEX
AUG 30
1916

TEXT:

Will write a latter lato
[? ? ?]

El Paso Texas
August 29, 1916
Dear Burt:
Rec you letter
and was glad to hear
from you they have everything
in the stores down here that
they have have in Mass but they have a
lot of Mexican things here that they
dont have in Mass we had Gov inspection
this morning but i passed alright the
[?] R F D got excellent love to all
Albert

Mrs Elmer Loving
Palmer Road
Halifax
Mass

“BOYS IN KAKHI GUARDING THE RIO GRANDE”
“W.H. HORNE CO. EL PASO, TEX. U.S. CAVALRY DRILL”
“FORT BLISS, TEXAS”

POSTMARK:
PHARR, TEX
SEPT 20
1916

Sept 19 ’16
Dear Mother:
Am feeling fine
and as hard as a
rock and brown
as an Indian. Just
3 months ago tonight
we were called out
Remember? How
is every thing and
every one? L.A.B.

Mrs F.G. Ball
11489 N. Main
Jamestown,
N.Y.

> See also my previous post, Postcards from the US-Mexico Border of Yore.

P.S. My favorite rare book dealer blog is Greg Gibson’s Bookman’s Log. Watch out, these rare book and emphemera guys are dangerous. If he ever scares up a Manhattan clipper ship card…

Further Notes on John Bigelow, Jr. (1854-1936): On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo: the Rare Westernlore Press Edition

Top 13 Trailers for Movies with Extra-Astral Texiness

Translating Across the Border

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C.M. Mayo’s books, articles, podcasts, and more.

Cartridges and Postcards from the US-Mexico Border of Yore

Postcards from the US-Mexico border, 1916.

About a century ago, after the fall of Francisco I. Madero’s government in 1913, with the ensuing struggle between the Huertistas and Carrancistas, and the chaos along the US-Mexico border (in part fomented by German agents, hoping to keep the U.S. Army otherwise occupied during WWI), the U.S. Army set up a number of camps there. On ebay, my sister found these postcards, probably sent by a soldier stationed near El Paso, dated October 26, 1916.

One of the postcards shows an address in Alliance, Ohio, a town noted for its Feline Historical Museum. Thank you, Google.

Here is another GIF, this one of some cartridges I picked up– by invitation, I hasten to emphasize– on private property right by the Rio Grande about 20 minutes’ drive down a dirt road from Presidio, Texas. Seriously, these are cartridges from the time of the Mexican Revolution (probably from target practice); they were just lying on the ground. That is how isolated a place it still is.

Cartridge circa 1916, from near Presidio, TX

One last GIF: An overcast day on the otherwise spectacular Hot Springs Historic Trail in the Big Bend National Park. The river is the Rio Grande, the border with Mexico. At sunset the mountains turn the most otherwordly sherbet-pink. Imagine this scene with a wall through it– your tax dollars down the hole for a perfectly pointless aesthetic and ecological atrocity. (I shall now take a deep breath.)

Hot Springs Historic Trail, Big Bend National Park, Far West Texas. (Don’t watch this GIF unless you are part Viking, it will make you seasick).

Not shown in my video: the guy hiking a few minutes ahead of me on this trail wore a T-shirt that said TEXAS GUN SAFETY TIP #1: GET ONE. Well, it ain’t California. Excuse me, I need to go crunch my granola. 

Much more anon.

“Dear Mother, Am hard as a rock and brown as an Indian…”
More Postcards from the US-Mexico Border Circa 1916

Peyote and the Perfect You

A Spell At Chinati Hot Springs

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C.M. Mayo’s books, articles, podcasts, and more.