This one came from a friend. The back is between the two of us, so it stays in the drawer. The front I am happy to share.
A rough day on Lake Michigan, Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, Mich.
That is the caption, in small type along the bottom. As if a rough day were something you might travel to see. Which, on the right postcard, it is.
It is an old linen card, the kind printed in the middle of the last century, with every colour turned up as far as it would go. The sky is orange and violet and bruised. The lake is churning white. There are gulls everywhere, thrown about the sky like scraps of paper.
And on the left, a long pier running out into the weather, with a lighthouse on it.
That is the St. Joseph North Pier. It has two lights, an inner and an outer, joined by a raised iron catwalk. The catwalk was there so a keeper could reach the end of the pier when the lake was coming over the top of it. On a day like the one on this card, that walkway was the whole point.
Up in the top right corner, someone has written a number in pencil. 66801. A dealer, a collector, a shop clearing out a box. I have no idea. The card had a life before it reached my friend, and another before it reached me.
What I like most is the honesty of it.
Most postcards sell the good day. Blue water, a nice hotel, wish you were here. This one sells the bad one. Dark sky, heavy sea, a lonely light hanging on at the end of a pier. Somebody looked at that and thought, yes, people will want to send this.
They were right. Someone did. Decades later, someone did again.
Nobody needs a lighthouse on the nice days. It earns its keep on the rough ones. So do friends, come to think of it.
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