Tall tale, or exaggeration, postcards were popular in the early 1900s. Their fanciful subject matter was limited only by the imagination of the photographer, and often included an element of local pride/bragging regarding the size of crops grown. This seldom-seen grasshopper exaggeration is a real-photo postcard (RPPC) by F. D. Conard of Garden City, Kansas. The larger-than-life grasshopper pushs mightily against a steam engine, in a scene entitled “The Train Hold-Up.”
A finely detailed and scarce 1907 exaggeration postcard, published by George B. Cornish of Arkansas City, Kansas, has a more typical agricultural “bragging rights” theme, with one railroad car from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad required just to hold one ear of locally grown corn. Both postcards are also of interest to collectors of railroad postcards.
You can see more examples of tall-tale postcards on our North Bay, Ontario and Sturgeon Falls “vintage postcards in history” pages.
Read a post about black American social history as portrayed in antique trade cards, or see more fantasy postcards.
Copyright ©2008 VintagePostcards.org
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