Friday, August 7, 2009

Vintage Boredom: the In-Law Collection

So, the In-Laws 5000 have some awesome old postcard albums, including this one.


This used to be a common thing people did, back when postcards were very common and photographs were very rare. This one is about a hundred years old, with cards from the aughts to as late as the forties.

Now, pretty much anything made of paper that's a hundred years old is inherently cool. But a significant proportion of the postcards in this album reach a greater plateau of awesomeness by virtue of a more or less spectacular boringness! So, grab a strong cup of coffee, and take a look at some of these beauties!

Greetings from Adair, Iowa!

Point Loma, near San Diego, California

Sunset on Great Salt Lake, Utah



Tenderfoot Mountain, Salida, Colorado




Rio Grande Bridge, Del Norte, Colorado



Feeding Livestock at Sugar Plant, Grand Junction, Colorado


Building-Assylum, Osawatomie, Kansas


Public Libary, Salida, Colorado

Sunset Behind Pike's Peak, Colorado

So! Which one did you find the most boring?







16 comments:

DrSchnell said...

There is a certain level of boringness that, once reached, makes the postcard unboring. And many of these reach that standard. But my favorite/boringest is feeding cattle at the sugar plant.

Yankee in England said...

Feeding Cattle is pretty boring but have to agree with DrSchnell at a certain point the boring become unboring.

Jennifer said...

Whether it's boring or not, I like the asylum.

Elaine said...

I liked the maximum security library for Best Boring, or is that Most Boringtudinous?
The "God's judgment" sunset of Pike's Peak is ...well, "does not fit the category!" You can tell that any second, ZAP!--someone's gonna get it!

Kritkrat said...

You're boring.

Dug said...

What are they doing with livestock at a sugar plant? Not sure I really want to know. Egad!

Aviatrix said...

The public library is the most boring, followed by the first one with the boring overly colourful trees. But I don't really find them that boring. I'd be happy to have taken any of those pictures.

d said...

i sort of think the fact that they're drawn makes them unboring. yeah, they're on par with really terrible hotel art, but still, somebody took some time and drew them.

Elaine said...

@dug: if it's sugar beet country, they might be feeding the greens and the pulp to the livestock. And then there would be plenty of fertilizer for the next crop...

@Aviatrix: yes! two votes for the library styled after a penitentiary.

gl. said...

all the pictures of salida totally crack me up. i mean really: salida?

The Calico Cat said...

The Library - why do you need a post card of the library?

Elaine said...

Three votes for the Fort Knox-inspired library! I just KNEW it was the most boring.

mrs.5000 said...

If any of you had ever been to Salida, Colorado, you would be more impressed with its library, is all I can say. You would be perhaps surprised it had a library at all, and touched by the sturdy neo-classical vocabulary with which it once expressed its small-town aspirations.

And if you knew my great aunt, whose collection this was, you could imagine this as a landmark building for her. It would have been more or less at the edge of her familiar territory, since she lived her whole life in and around Gunnison, and Salida was the closest town to the east, sixty miles and a continental divide away.

If you find the name Salida laughable, since it's Spanish for exit, it probably won't help to know it's pronounced with an long Anglo i, much like "saliva".

Boringly yours,

Jenners said...

Well, it was going to be the mountains obscured by trees but then I got to the library and that was my pick!

Elaine said...

Mrs. 5000, we are sorry about our relative hilarity regarding the library. Among my treasured childhood memories is The Carnegie Library in Fort Smith, Arkansas-- (once the gateway to Indian Territory.) It was an imposing brick structure with huge sunny windows from the high ceilings to the gleaming hardwood floors...a temple to the drive of individuals toward learning and growth. At different times both my sister and I visited Fort Smith decades later...and we both looked for the library as a nostalgic destination. For four formative years it was our weekly stop, and there was no limit to how many books we could take out. Pure heaven. (But...it was a LOT prettier than the unadorned Salida vault. Sorry!)
remember--it's the postcard, not the real place that we're seeing!
Regards from Conway--very near the "PET-it Gene" (Petit Jean)River. Yours for Americanization,
Elaine

Bridget said...

The hand-colored photo (they're not actually drawn, are they?) of the white library gets my vote, perhaps because I find cows quite interesting. The insides of libraries are interesting - not sure about the insides of cows.