This one came from Eric, in the USA. Eric is one of my best post pals, the kind of friend you get to know through many many cards and letters.
He has just been on an epic tour of Lake Michigan. Somewhere along the way he found this, and thought of me.
It is made of wood. A thin slice of it, printed on both sides. The front is the Grand Traverse Lighthouse, at the very tip of the Leelanau Peninsula in northern Michigan, where Grand Traverse Bay opens out into the lake. There has been a light here since 1858.
On the card it hardly looks like a lighthouse at all. It looks like a home. A white brick house with a red roof, and the lantern perched on top like a hat.
Then you turn it over.
Airmail stripes round the edge. Two stamps. A yellow butterfly marked non-machineable surcharge, and a round Global Forever stamp with a compass rose on it, which seems about right for something crossing an ocean.
The compass stamp has been cancelled by hand, with a big looping scrawl of black pen. Somewhere in an American post office, a person picked up a slab of wood addressed to a man in England, and drew on it.
I love that loop more than I can say. That’s postal history in a squiggle. It arrived without a crack. Not a chip. Not a scratch worth mentioning.
I love this wooden postcard and that it was not ruined by the USPS machinery.
Leave a Reply