PostCard Talk Blog Manda and Emanda by Mary Katherine May

Manda & Emanda
by Mary Katherine May
of Quality Music and Books

On today's post I would like to step back from postcards for a moment and look at this photograph. It came to me, if I recall correctly, in a box on which I bid at an auction several years ago.

As a matter of fact, that auction was rather funny. I was bidding on a box of wood blocks for our grandchildren, and won the bid for a small amount of money--$7.

In the back of the auction room was an area with an outside door where merchandise was picked up, and after I was through bidding for the day I went to pick up my box.

Box? How about SEVEN boxes? Boxes full of who-knows-what, but they were mine. A buck a piece. It was an adventure going through them, and some of it I threw out, while some "artifacts" (in my mind only) had a value that negated them being tossed out even though no one wanted the stuff, then or now, and it is still here at the house getting dusted every few months.

Here are Manda and Emanda, surname unknown. Location unknown. It does look like the condition of the grass and garden along the wall would place the photo in late spring or early fall, though without coats or jacket my conjecture is that it was a nice, warm day to take a picture. Manda and Emanda were neat and tidy--their yard has no leaves to be raked, at least in the spot where this snapshot was taken. The hose is hooked up to the outside spigot, so the outside water valve was open for the season.

Manda and Emanda were most likely sisters, maybe twins. They aren't smiling, but that doesn't mean that they weren't happy. There dresses look to be of the everyday variety, their hair not well done enough to be the weekly beauty parlor route--most likely pincurls. Judging from their long-stem roses, I also would speculate that they were born in the late 1800s or thereabouts, when foundation garments didn't maintain the "status quo" as they do today.

The house appears to be a rambler style, and those shingles! Remember how hard it was to paint those shingles? Now I am speaking about this from observation. In our house girls didn't paint shingles. We cleaned inside and washed and dried dishes, swept floors and the like. Outside work was for men.

That was the 1950s.

How about that? All from a snapshot.