Thursday, February 21, 2013

Vanishing Postcards


A friend in Cleveland recently asked me to help out her fifth grader with a school project. The students were tasked with soliciting postcards from around the country. The postcards were to be mailed to the classroom and include a few pertinent local facts. It wasn't all that long ago that my own fifth grader received a similar assignment and I appreciated the response she received from friends and family so I readily agreed to help out.

It never occurred to me that I’d have difficulty finding a loco postcard. My resultant, albeit unscientific, research would seem to indicate that the business of picture postcards is going the way of Saturday mail delivery. There was a time that local picture postcards were easily found in any drug store. The once ubiquitous five foot carousel racks were commonly found near the registers.

They are not so easily found these days. On a recent visit to Walgreens I had to ask a clerk for help.

“Do you carry postcards?”

“I think we do.”

She led me to an aisle but we didn't immediately see them.

“Ah, here there are,” she said, somewhat surprised by her own discovery, "I thought we had them."

On the end cap of the aisle, on a portion of the top shelf, next to refrigerator magnets, sat a small carousel with a meager offering of cards.

Judging from this product placement I suspect it won’t long until they vanish from the shelves completely.
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