Miss Grace Rhodes lived in Long Island, a very small city in northern Kansas – not far from the border of Nebraska.
A thriving agricultural community was established here in 1869, but a devastating invasion of locusts in 1874 caused settlers to flee.
The city was re-founded when the railroad was built through the area in 1885.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island,_Kansas
(Alert readers may recall that we saw a postcard story related to Grace and the city of Long Island about a year ago- “Elmer Gives Grace her Name”.)
In June of 1912, Grace received a postcard from her friend, Elsie.
Elsie mailed the greeting from Logan, a small city in Phillips County of north-central Kansas.
Logan was considerably larger in 1910 than it is today.
Long Island, Kansas is about 23 miles north of Logan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan,_Kansas
The face of the postcard is a comic photograph of an amorous trio.
I am not sure what is happening in this scene.
A young man is seated in a barber’s chair and seems to be exchanging kisses with the young female attendants on either side.
There are features of the photograph that are surprising to me – the attendants are wearing slacks and they appear to have professional jackets or smocks.
Each woman sports an elaborate “up-do”, a mass of hair worn off the face and above the shoulders.
Our hero is kissing the woman on his right, but the legend, “NEXT”, suggests that he will soon turn to the left.
On the reverse, Elsie apologizes for her tardiness in responding to the last postcard from Grace.
Elsie writes, “I am ashamed of myself for not ans. (sic) sooner”.
Elsie asks Grace, “anything doing up in that country”.
There have been some interesting events for Elsie.
Elsie reports that she “went to a party Tues. eve, got home at half after five next morning.”
This exploit provokes a boast from Elsie, “What you know about that. Ha! Ha!”
The message closes in haste, Elsie “must ring off”.
One hopes that Grace was amused by the racy postcard, that she forgave Elsie’s tardy reply, and that the friends remained correspondents for many years.
