What Are The Odds?

In August 1962, a seven-year-old boy on summer vacation between 1st and 2nd grade mailed a post card to his teacher, and never thought about it again.

In 2013, a woman from his mother's hometown was shopping in a flea market some 300 miles away in another state,  and found the card. She recognized the boy's name, and bought the card for couple of bucks.

Yes, my last name is painted out for this post. Spots in the corners appear to be where the card was affixed to a photo album or something similar.

Returning home, the woman contacted the mother and asked if it was from her son. That mother then sent it to her son to ask if he remembered it.


No, I don't, but I thought the world of Ms. Gillespie at the time.  She's long gone, of course, and the card must have been part of an estate sale. What a strange chain of events has returned the card to me, 51 years later. And to think she kept the card ...



p.s. I'm looking at the card as a snapshot from an America that has all but passed from memory. Note the lack of zip codes, the three-cent postage, and the inscription ("In God We Trust") on the stamp.