April 6, 2006

I posted the following story on my home board, but I thought I would repeat it here. I have a website where I am compiling information about my family, my digital scrapbook pages, my Clay Aiken concert experiences, pictures and just anything and everything about me. So, after I posted my previous blog I moved it over to my website and added more of the Crescent City postcards. I did some research on Frank Patterson, who was the photographer who made most of the “real photo postcards” I had of Crescent City, and discovered he was in San Quentin from 1940 to 1946. Not a nice man, by the way. His business was sold in 1944 to another photographer named Laws. So, most of my postcards had “Pat” on them and were undoubtedly photographed before 1940, but one said “Laws” and would have been after 1944.

I was cleaning up this postcard.....here it is below.....when I had a weird feeling. Obviously I had been here before, we lived in town until I was in the 5th grade and I wandered all over the place and certainly I arrived home from college a few times to the Greyhound Station.....but it was something else.





So, I kept staring at the darn thing and eventually I zoomed in and you should have heard me hoot!!!






The summer between my 5th and 6th grades (remember we had moved out to the country) I got a phone call from a schoolmate who asked if I could come into town with my dad on Saturday and he would take me to a movie. I know, a little young, but it WAS my first date and this young man was very cute. So, I went and I’m sorry to say I don’t know what the movie was, but I do remember walking around after the movie and talking and talking. I remember being at the waterfront, which is across from the Greyhound Station and that somewhere around there he bought me an ice cream cone and he walked me back to my dad’s store while we ate our ice cream. It was strawberry.

Now, check out the cropped piece of the postcard again. The young man’s name was Jimmie Day.... check the name of the Deli - LOL - .this old postcard captured a place in time when I was so innocent and the world was a safe place for a 10 year old girl and boy to wander around a small town without anyone worrying about their safety. While I had remembered the day fondly, I had forgotten the movie (I will never get that back) and I had forgotten where we got the ice cream but now I have that piece back. Unfortunately, Jimmie and his mom left town at the end of summer and I never heard from him again.

The Greyhound Station, the Day Deli (if it still existed) and, in fact all of the first few streets of Crescent City were damaged or destroyed in the Tsunami that hit March 28, 1964.. Eleven people were killed and I believe it was the only Tsunami to hit the continental United States to cause loss of life. I was in San Francisco at college when it occurred.

I have had these postcards for years but had never looked that closely at them. It’s amazing what treasures you can find in a scrap of old paper. And now it is digitalized and recorded and I highly recommend everyone who can do this with your old family photos and papers, do so. Blow things up and check the detail!!!

Edited to add...had another brainstorm and went looking for some old pictures. Yep, found some from the 5th grade and here is Jimmie Day.





Oh, and Crescent City is in California on the Coast about 25 miles south of the Oregon border.