This card is one of my favorites because I really had to wrestle with it. When I first read the back I thought it seemed so forlorn, but I hoped I could find a happy ending for its author, so I bought it off eBay. In the end it was really hard to “solve” because ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thoughtsredacted.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/007-Stevens-Point-Front-640x408-300x191.jpg\")
at some point someone had erased the addressee’s name, leaving behind only the vaguest scratches, and the writer only used her initials. So I knew this card was mailed to a married woman at a rural route postal box in Wisconsin in 1922, by a person with the initials H.E. who lived in a different city. I am proud of figuring this one out!<\/p>\n
H.E. went by Helen and was writing to her mother Emma, the wife of a German immigrant farmer a few counties over. Helen wasn’t doing well.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thoughtsredacted.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/007-Stevens-Point-Back-2-407x640-e1528910599722-300x191.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Dear Mother: Marie sent a card the other day and she said you wanted to know if we got that yes and did you get my letter I wrote right away well I am still in bed can’t get up yet I hurt quite so sore. But oh ma you cant guess how I wish to get out of bed I must lay on my back day in & day out your daughter H. E.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Helen wrote this card on July 13 and died exactly two months later, “suffering with a complication of ailments,” according to her obituary. She left behind a three-year-old daughter named Mildred. A year and a half later, her husband Fred married a divorcee with a daughter slightly older than Mildred. That second wife died not quite 10 years later, after a prolonged illness of three years and a confinement to bed of several months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This card is one of my favorites because I really had to wrestle with it. When I first read the back I thought it seemed so forlorn, but I hoped I could find a happy ending for its author, so … Continue reading