Do you have a kid going off to camp this summer?
Do you expect your child to write letters or postcards each day while he or she is away?
Or are you going to just get their daily status updates from Twitter and Facebook?
Back in the day, Hayley Mills and the other kids at camp didn't have smartphones in their tents. And so they wrote letters to Mom and Dad. Or sent postcards.
This vintage oversized postcard, the front side of which is pictured above, was designed to streamline the process of writing home by providing a series of boxes to check off on the reverse side:
Kids could easily indicate the activities they took part in that day. There are even boxes to tell what the weather was like.
Campers had to do a little work, though. One line simply states:
I am feeling _________________.And there are multiple lines to provide details on the day's favorite activity.
I have several different unused postcards of this type. Each one had a different cute cartoon on the front. Here are a couple of the others:
Now, aren't these much nicer than tweets and status messages? Plus, you can't save and scrapbook messages on a computer screen, can you?
Mom checks in with this great anecdote: "Back in the 1950s-60s when I was a camper, then a counselor, we were required to send a letter or post card home every week. (I'm sure all sleep-away camps did this because parents would call and inquire as to whether their child was still alive...etc). This was called a "supper letter" and you had to have at least one to drop in a mail bag held by a counselor at the entrance to the dining hall, or you were sent back to your cabin to produce one before you could have dinner. (I don't remember anyone having been sent back to her cabin, so I guess we were all good girls, or "hungry girls"....)"
ReplyDeletewhere do you buy these?
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