It’s difficult to find good postcards anymore.
Gas stations once were the place to them; a rack of postcards always stood just inside of every door. Nowadays because I pay with plastic, I rarely step foot inside of a gas station. But when I do go in search of a variety of local cards, I’m often disappointed.
Where have all of the postcards gone?
Thankfully postcards aren’t totally extinct; they’re still out there if you look for them, but the selection is pathetic.
Scenic regions always produce the most cards. Way back when cameras required film and chemical processing to produce photographs, I bought these beautiful cards for my photo album instead of attempting to document every mountain, ocean, or wild animal myself. I don’t enjoy experiencing the outdoors through a lens, but I like having a handful of postcards to remind me of the places I’ve been.
My postcard collection is this poor girl’s traveling art exhibit. I remember the days when postcards cost a dime - a souvenir even I could afford.
I love Wall Drug.
Anyone who has ever driven Interstate 90 east-west across South Dakota is familiar with Wall Drug, even if you’ve never stopped for a visit. Hundreds of Wall Drug billboards remind road-trippers, “Who has the gall to bypass Wall?” or “It’s only 200 miles to Wall Drug...”
I would never think of skipping this shameless tourist trap. I love the mammoth general store that attracts over 20,000 customers a day during the summer months.
I find Wall Drug terribly exciting. Because the store is located literally out in the middle of nowhere (nestled in downtown Wall, SD, population 800), almost all of the people stopping for rest, food, and shopping are road-trippers.
Wall Drug is a celebration of the great American road trip.
A few years ago, Wall Drug closed - to my great disappointment - one of my favorite rooms in their sprawling store. Wall’s postcard room was a traveler’s sanctuary.
Once upon a time, every road-tripper looked for postcards to send home to loved ones.
A photo of the sun setting in the Badlands with the words, “I wish you were here...” written in cursive across the bottom of the postcard is a classic. Who doesn’t love receiving a jack-a-lope postcard in the mail?
I have no idea why Wall Drug decided to shut down one of their most original stores.
E-mail, texting, twittering, Facebook, and cellphones have killed the magic of sending and receiving postcards.
Three walls of the cozy postcard room were covered with hundreds of different postcards. Photographs of South Dakota’s landscapes and wild animals, and paintings from Wall Drug’s huge Western Art collection were the main themes.
I always spent at least an hour in the room, picking out postcards for everyone on my mailing list. And then I’d sit down at the long wooden table in the middle of the room next to other travelers working on their postcards, and I’d write home.
“You need an extra stamp?” I recall an elderly stranger asking me as I discovered one postcard in my stack that I’d overlooked.
Those were the days...
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