Postcard From the Past

It will pretty much take a journal entry to explain this picture. This photo was taken at my Lockport house Christmas Eve 1995.

The “postcards” we are all holding have a picture of a man and woman dressed in harlequin outfits.

This picture was taken at the 1995 annual meeting of the Musical Box Society. The meeting favor that year was a musical photo album. Pictures were taken as you entered the banquet. They were quickly developed to be available after the banquet and entertainment.

As fate would have it, my good friend Leroy was seated behind this couple when the entertainment commenced after the banquet. Leroy kindly asked this lady to remove her headpiece so he and the people behind would view the stage. This woman got very irate and told Leroy that she thought it would be best if he moved!

I have never seen Leroy so mad. Billy had to use the restroom. He had a grin as he returned. The pictures had been arranged on a table to be picked up as you exited the banquet room. He took one of the two photos of the offending couple to sneak into Leroy’s photo album, which we were able to do.

I admit that when it was time to get the pictures I slid the other picture of this couple between the table and wall so it was out of sight. When no one was looking, it left with me.

Now a bit of background on Leroy: Leroy’s family ran the most prestigious clothing store and was a respected businessman in his town. Over the years he had been the recipient of many postcards from billy and I when we would be on road trips to phonograph shows.

It is a known fact postcards are widely read in the post offices. My good friend Karen had an aunt who worked in the post office. She would relate with glee how much the sorting staff enjoyed the cards I used to send her!! One year for XMAS Karen’s mother gave me a box of envelopes!

Now I have to Segway to Judy. He was the first of my friends to be on the cutting edge of computers. Judy had one of the first scanners. It is hard to imagine only some 20 years ago something as mundane as a computer scanner could be considered exotic.

Judy scanned this picture so it could be printed on heavy card stock with the picture on the front and Leroy’s store address printed on the back.

I would stamp these cards and pass them out to friends so they could drop Leroy a note!

If you look closely at the picture, you can just barely make out printing…. This is advertising for Leroy’s clothing store!

We had more fun writing notes to Leroy. Poor Leroy would run to intercept the mail before his brother at the store could find these! The mailman told Leroy, “You sure have interesting friends!”

We all sent Leroy postcards that XMAS Eve.