Last night, feeling a rare, unnatural burst of energy (I must tell my physicians about that), I began rooting through some of the 427,000 postcards archived in the Lauderdale Library. And by “archived” I mean dumped in shoe boxes, piled in file cabinets, and wedged under that wobbly leg of the dining-room table. My plan is to arrange them in some fashion, but invariably I find one card that is particularly odd or interesting, and then I get distracted. And before you know it, it’s almost 7 p.m. and time for bed!
But last night I uncovered this card, and you can see why it took my attention away from the others.
The image is a bit fuzzy, but it shows a handsome young man, dressed in a nice suit and dapper hat, holding a pen or pencil in his mouth, and apparently writing on a piece of paper “Thomas F. Doran — Armless News Boy.” And writing it better than I could, even if I used both arms. At the bottom of the card, much worn away, was this faded inscription: “LOST BOTH ARMS JUMPING ON FREIGHT TRAINS WHEN TWELVE YEARS OF AGE.”