Postcards from the edge
BY NANCY STETSON Correspondent
t's a classic hunting scene: the hunter behind the steering wheel, rifle propped next to him, with the captured game proudly displayed on the hood of the car.

But in this picture, there's a big difference: the deer's sitting behind the wheel and the hunter in black-and-red plaid is the captured game on the hood.

"Tables Turned," Richard Miller's best-known postcard, can be seen at the Center for the Arts in Bonita Springs through Sept. 22, along with other humorously absurd images. It's part of "Storytelling Through the Mail: Tall Tales Postcards" from the Michigan State University Museum.

The exhibit groups postcards by theme, and Miller's "Tables Turned" is surrounded by other deer-as-hunter postcards, including a cartoon one that shows three deer carousing in a car, drinking and smoking as they drive, with two hapless hunters tied to the front of the car.

There's also a Russian postcard, circa 1968 -- a cartoon image of a man in a river with a duck in his mouth while his dog sits on the bank, relaxing against a rock.

"Floridian's map of U.S." by Artist and date unknown

"We try to do something that isn't just your typical exhibit" says Joni Loehnis, the Center's publicist. "We're trying to expand people's understanding of what art is. It's not just a painting, it's not just a photograph. Art is a lot of different things in your daily life."

Admittedly, postcards aren't as much a part of our daily lives as they once were, though people tend to still send postcards while on vacation. (When Loehnis recently went on a cruise with her husband, she sent a postcard. The card cost 50 cents, while the postage cost 60 cents, she says, laughing.)

Europe had picture postcards in the 1870s, but it wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that they became very popular in the U.S. The Golden Age of Photography Postcards in America took place between 1905 and 1915, but people were still sending postcards mid-century. After all, it was cheaper than a letter, and e-mail and text messaging were still decades away.

The Tall Tales postcards fall into different categories, but all are based on the genre's extreme exaggeration. For example, there are the "oversized fish" postcards. Fishermen are known for boasting about "the one that got away." On these postcards they could send images of gigantic fish to their friends. One 1906 postcard is actually a series of three, because the fish is so big, it can't be contained on one small postcard. So the fisherman would send the postcards over a few days: first the head, then the middle, then the tail.

"Caught a Big One"

Other postcards show images of men in boats dwarfed by the fish they've caught with the words "The fish bite good here" or "Caught a big one" accompanying them.

One variation --with the caption "In Michigan, it's possible to get drunk on water"-- shows a underwater cartoon image of two fishermen with red noses. One fish is taking a photograph of them, while the second fish is saying, "How you gonna cook them Pa?" The third fish responds: "They're already stewed, son!"

The postcards mainly focus on rural and agricultural images.

"They're kind of homespun, with outdoor images. The wide open spaces," Loehnis says.

"Hicken's Fur-Bearing Trout"

One postcard maker, Mike Roberts Color Reproductions, used the same basic image on his cards: a red flatbed truck facing left and four children on the far right, one pointing in amazement. Roberts would then place different oversized produce on the back of the truck: giant grapes, a giant ear of corn, a giant potato, a giant apple, then sell them to the appropriate areas of the country.

One postcard maker figured out a way to sell the same image to various locales. Instead of putting the name of a state or city on the front of the card, he'd simply print: "They grow them big here in ," and the sender could write in the name of wherever they were.

A postcard maker known simply as Leigh created partially hand-tinted images of giant fruit on a horse-drawn cab in Florida. A postcard of a man carting an oversized grapefruit is copyrighted 1909.

Alfred Stanley Johnson of Waupun, Wisconsin, created unrealistic blackand white photographic scenes with understated captions. He was admired for his skill in creating highly-realistic images. One of his postcards at the exhibit show men at a train station pushing wheelbarrows containing giant cantaloupe.

"Saw a fair-sized trout here today" by Mike Roberts

Such images are easy to create now, with PhotoShop, but these photographers had to be creative in the darkroom, joining multiple images to create one fanciful one.

F.D. Conrad of Garden City, Kansas, was known for his photographic postcards of giant grasshoppers, inspired by the 1935 Kansas grasshopper plague. One postcard shows a man riding a giant grasshopper as if on a horse, complete with saddle and bridle. The caption reads "I'm on my way - I'll be seein' yeh."

Some postcards focus on geography, boasting about different states' attributes. For example, a postcard of Florida exaggerates its size in relationship to the rest of the country. An image of Texas goes to even more extremes, making the state appear almost as big as the United States, then claiming, next to its scale of miles, to be "scaled down 60% to avoid embarrassing the rest of the world."

In addition to boasting about the individual state's high points, the maps also make fun of the other states. So on one postcard, Illinois is called ILL Noise, D.C. is Snafu D.C., California is deemed Uninhibitable and the entire Northeast is dubbed "Damned Yankee" land. And where Florida's proud name should be, the peninsula is called simply: Swampland.

The "Storytelling Through the Mail" exhibit also contains postcards and taxidermy of made-up creatures: the furry trout of the Canadian Northwest territories (it's so cold the fish have grown fur to keep warm) and the jackalope, an oversized jackrabbit with antlers.

"For people over 50, the exhibit's a trip down memory lane," Loehnis says. "A lot of people remember the jackalope. For the younger people it's a chance to see what was done before PhotoShop. The photographs are really amazing, the way they combined negatives to produce a new image, such as the big fish on the back of a truck. Kids come through the exhibit and they're laughing, pointing, having a really good time." ¦ If you go

>>What: Storytelling Through the Mail: Tall Tales Postcards

>>When: through Sept. 22, gallery hours: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon - 5 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday

>>Where: Center for the Arts, 26100 Old 41 Road, Bonita Springs >>Cost: Free >>Information: Call (239) 495-3999 or go to www.artcenterbonita.org

>>Other: The Center will hold two free workshops or FunShops, for families from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 8 and Saturday, Sept. 15. The FunShops include storytelling and Tall Tale movies. Kids can also make their own Tall Tale postcards by hand and also on computer. Children must be accompanied by an adult.