Oregon Pear and Peach Orchard

Soon I will run out of giant fruit and vegetable cards to post on this blog. Some people may consider this a blessing. But the message on the backs of these cards have often been very entertaining too. Here's one of pears and peaches in Oregon. It seems strange to group those two together, since they ripen at different times of the year...not to mention that Oregon is hardly prime peach-growing territory. Well, never mind all that. We do grow great pears here.

 And here's the back of the card.

The virtually punctuation-free message on the card sent to Rebecca Bales is not that exciting. It reads:

Dear Sis

I received your card was glad to hear from you will try to write a letter for that country soon though am pretty busy to write hope every thing  is O.K.  up there every thing  is O.K. here so write As Ever

F.B.

So, here's what's interesting (to me, anyway) about this card: it was sent to Dorena, Oregon, a logging and gold-mining town that doesn't exist anymore. For reasons unknown to me, the name of the town was created by combining the first names of Dora Burnette and Rena Martin. The town already had a school and a post office back in the 1890s. In the 1940s, the Corps. of Engineers began constructing a dam on the nearby Row River. According to Wikipedia,  the entire town was flooded and approximately 100 households were moved five miles upriver. It's still called Dorena, but it's not the same place. The lake created by the dam is called Dorena Lake.

Dutch Stereotype

Back in about 1910, cards that provided a humorous stereotypical view of Dutch (and sometimes Germans) were very popular. As far as I can tell, the humor was well intended. These cards were all sent to  Cora Huffsmith  of Dushore, Pennsylvania.  According to Conover Genealogy,  Cora Huffsmith, born in Pennsylvania in 1891, was the 8th great-granddaughter of Wolphert Gerretse Van Kouwenhoven, a baker from Utrecht, Netherlands.  Friends and family must have sent her these cards because of her Dutch heritage.

Here are ze backs of de cards in ze same order:

Peery's Dead Shot Vermifuge

This is a trade card advertising Wright's various preparations, including McMunn's Elixir of Opium and Peery's Dead Shot Vermifuge. And then there's Crossman's Specific Mixture, which sounds particularly vague.

On the front of the card, for your amusement, is a puzzle. Try this before and after applying the Roman Eye Balsam to see if there's a difference.

Webster's Cut Rate Drug Store was located on Court Street in Binghamton, New York. Here's a card showing Court Street about 25 years after the trade card was printed.

The signs are hard to make out, so it's difficult to know exactly where Webster's would have been on this card.
Here's the back of the card, sent to Miss Margaret Sipe from Miss Clara Abbott in 1908.