This real-photo view of North Main Street doesn't actually provide much of a view. Or even much of a clue as to when the photograph was actually taken. It does show the broad expanse of Main Street with some wagon tracks but generally well graded and smooth with a couple of horse-drawn vehicles approaching and healthy, summer-leafed rows of rather young trees on either side of the street. Beneath the trees on the right one can make out the hitching post that stood just north of the corner of Main and Mulberry (in front of a house that was, much later, the telephone exchange) and beyond it the steps of the Carnegie Library. As for a date, the card was postmarked on October 18, 1915. But it could have been made from a view taken as much as a decade earlier, when the library building was finished. In fact, the card it has most in common with is the C. U. Williams real-photo view up South Main Street which was postmarked in 1907. The back design of the photographic paper stock used is a variant of a design the Playle Real-Photo Stamp Backs Page dates 1910-1918, which fits with both the postmark and the features of the photograph. It differs from the Williams photograph in some important respects. The caption on this card has been hand-written directly on the paper surface with india ink, rather than printed as part of the photographic process. The caption on the Williams card is white-on-black, indicating the caption was lettered on the negative. The focus is disappointingly soft and the image is overexposed, so details are washed out. The Williams card is sharp and well exposed. I'm inclined to think this a home-grown product, perhaps taken by a photographer with a Postcard Kodak who printed up a quantity of cards and peddled them to a retailer in Salem. Unfortunately the message on the back is no help. (Let this be a lesson: you could be of great help to future postcard collectors if you would note on the cards you send where and when you bought them.) The message in this case is brief and hard to decipher. The card is addressed in scrawling pencil to Mrs. Margaret Petro, Mitchell, Indiana. The message reads something like, "hellow mag how are you We have very well I Been looking for a Card from you I would come down some Sunday if I knew when fair wasn't. Bessy Minnie Peugh." Across the top is a fragmentary addendum, "an Bring that Box of Poppa." (Two curious things about this: the ambiguity of "box of Poppa": does that mean a box belonging to Poppa, or a box full of Poppa? And "when fair isn't": the Washington County Fair has been in August for all of recorded history that I'm aware of; by October Ms. Peugh should have felt completely safe in venturing out.) (5/11/04) Home | The 1910s | Next card