A tourist can buy a lot of things in Fredericksburg, Texas. They can buy a cowboy hat, hand-sewn down the road or machine made halfway around the world and in a range of colors from black to tan to flamingo pink.

There are political trinkets—a Reagan/Bush ‘84 commemorative t-shirt or a bobble head of Abe Lincoln, Donald Trump, or Jesus.

And of course, there’s Willie. My personal favorite is the Willie Nelson air freshener.

Unbelievably, the one thing I was looking for does not exist. Unbeknownst to me, the postcard has disappeared. I searched through at least fifty stores and found exactly zero postcards. 

At my final stop, I recounted the search of the last ninety minutes to a sales person and asked, “Do people send postcards anymore?” 

“All I know is we used to sell them, but no one bought them so we stopped. I think they’re too expensive to mail. Plus it’s easier to post a photo online. Try Walmart.”

Try thrusting a dagger through my heart.

I went home, and googled: do people still send postcards? Pages of postcard obituaries popped up, starting around five years ago. Never one to see a trend, I had bought two books of postcard stamps before leaving Charlottesville. I’m undeterred.

As I consider the most common explanations for the postcard demise, I’m asserting that cost is not the issue. I crossed that bridge when I realized that the Willie Nelson air freshener was twenty-four dollars.

However, I can accept that writing individual postcards is more time consuming than taking a photo, posting it online, and crafting a single #snappymessage suitable across my universe of friends—several of whom I’ve never met.

However, my grandchildren aren’t on social media. Nor is my morning coffee friend, who shares a phone with her husband for the sole purpose of making phone calls. This reminds me of an older man who walked into a Starbucks a few years ago in Austin and asked the salesperson, “Do you still sell just coffee?”

My analog friend loves postcards. So do, I believe, my grandchildren. 

I think about a road trip we took in the summer of 2020. We were still in the shadows of COVID, but our son and his fiancée were building a home in Montana. We wanted to drive cross country to see it. 

The year prior to COVID, our grandson, Jack, had been quite ill. As a consequence, for eighteen months we had lived in near quarantine so that we could visit him daily.

A month-long roadtrip was daunting. I remember stopping to say goodbye to Jack and crying as we pulled away. In that moment, I decided that I would send him a postcard every day.

And every single day, I did.

It was my quiet time. A chance to let him know that I was thinking about him. A time to remind myself how lucky we were that we got to keep him. I tried to include things about Jack. A bit about me. A sliver of our trip. If I know my daughter-in-law, these postcards still exist somewhere.

I hope Jack reads them when he’s 40. Maybe he’ll remember what it was like to be a 4-year-old boy. Or what I was like as his grandmother. In a perfect world, they become one tiny page in my extremely brief legacy. Suffice it to say, I take my postcards seriously.

The other morning at the coffee shop, I wrote for an hour in my journal—largely a rant about postcards. That rant became this blog.

The simple act of putting pen to paper is meditative, or at times cathartic. I’m doing more of that on this trip, both to capture my inward reactions to each place and to connect myself outward to my friends—not to mention the three granddaughters we’ve added to the mix. 

On my walk home, I stopped at the visitors center.

Do you know anyplace that sells postcards? 

No. Not in town. That’s why we made some. They’re free. How many do you need?

I really do love Fredericksburg. 

I took two, found two more in the World War 2 museum (although it’s limited how many people will covet a photo of the Chester Nimitz statue), and added two lackluster ones from the Pedernales State Park welcome center. 

It’s a start. I’ve become somewhat of a postcard bloodhound. (Seriously … Walmart??)

Of course, I will occasionally post a photo online and hope my friends do the same. It’s an easy, fun way to stay connected. 

But a post is not a postcard. It’s not a single message crafted to one special person. You don’t need to recheck a postcard every five minutes to see if anyone ❤️’d it. A postcard is an act of faith.

My postcards never say, wish you were here. Instead I hope they imply, you were here. This morning. I conjured you over coffee. Because that’s how the act of writing to a friend makes me feel—like I’m telling them a story.

This is a long way of saying, if you know me, be on the lookout for a postcard. And if you don’t know me but you want a post card, hit the contact button. Email me your mailing address, and I’ll write you a postcard. 

Now for an optimistic update. Yesterday, after I’d written this, we went to Bandera, Texas, an old western town that’s known as the cowboy capital. In a gift shop, Pat asked if they sold postcards.

“No,” the owner replied, “but we’re bringing them back. Do you know there’s no place in town where you can buy a photo of Bandera?”

“That’s crazy,” I replied, but as we walked through town we learned that sadly, he was right.

Categories: Ruminations, The United States

Tags: does anyone still write postcards, Fredericksburg Texas, nomadic retirement, postcards, the world inbetween, Unusual retirement options