“Don’t we look like we had been somewhere,” the author of the postcard asks the addressee, a very special young man who was away visiting friends in Emporia, Kansas. “Well we were about froze just the same. Dandy skating now. As ever, Pansy.”
The message is dated January 22, 1911. The background of the photo reveals the “somewhere” they had been as Formoso, Kansas, where they were perhaps on a mission to pick up something for dinner from the Fogle and Burns Meat Market, which had been doing business on Formoso’s Main Street for just over a year. (This is the sharpest, clearest view of that store that I have ever seen.) Between the faces of the two girls we catch a glimpse of the Formoso New Era newspaper office snuggled next to Shedden’s Drug Store.
Picture postcards made a bold step forward in 1902 when Eastman Kodak began offering to print customers’ photos on postcard stock. Until then picture postcards, like many of those featured on this website, were produced in bulk on a printing press in much the same manner as a newspaper, but with slightly improved resolution, because of being printed on a more expensive paper stock.
Since the picture-side of Kodak’s postcards were really just photographs, the resolution of those pictures was superb. It helped matters to have one of Kodak’s new 3A 120 cameras which took rectangular postcard-size snapshots. Apparently someone in Charley Pool’s household at Lovewell, Kansas, owned one, because that’s Charley at the wheel beside his wife Blanche and the couple's youngest daughter Dorothy, who had recently turned five.
All four of the Poole children were girls. Hilde had left the nest the previous year, so if we suppose the young lady in the back seat to be Pansey, that still leaves 12-year-old Hazle to click the shutter. Or perhaps it was the other way around. In either case, Pansey would use the card to convey a quick note to her absent boyfriend, Charles Ginn. Charles quickly returned to Jewell County to resume their courtship, and they were married at the United Brethren Church of Lovewell before the end of summer.
“Poole” is a familiar surname in the saga of the Lovewell family. Charley Poole was the brother of Walt Poole, who had married Thomas and Orel Jane Lovewell’s daughter Josephine, their first child, born on Christmas Day of 1866 in the Lovewell cabin near the mouth of White Rock Creek. When Walt and Josephine relocated to Lissie, Texas, in 1907, Pansy Poole decided to tag along and help them settle in.
Thanks to someone’s skill with a camera and Kodak’s decision to facilitate high-resolution DIY postcards, we have a pristine glimpse of Formoso’s Main Street and a portion of the Charley and Blanche Poole family from 1911. Thanks also to whoever found the card and decided to list it on eBay.
