Greetings! from the 1940's.

No email? No Twitter, no Facebook?  Communicating  with people outside your own community wasn't as easy in the 1940's as it is today.  Of course, there was the telephone, but long distance was very expensive and people used it only for very important calls.  Western Union Telegrams were fast, but also expensive--and the arrival of a telegram usually meant some serious news was being delivered.  What people used was the US mail and the letter and its "little brother" the picture postcard. It only cost a penny to send a postcard and 3 cents to mail a letter.  It was a reliable and fairly quick way to get news to you family and friends who lived far away. 


Put the postcard into an envelope, and you had a short letter and a nice picture too.The pictures appear to be originally black and and white, with color applied later in the printing process.
This is The Chicago Temple, a church on the top of a skyscraper.

Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 and the United States Constitution was written and signed in 1787. 

The Rand Tower in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Trojan, mascot of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

San Juan Capistrano Mission in California

A letter from California--with a Christmas Seal from the March of Dimes on the envelope.

Golden Gate Park and Lombard Street in San Francisco

A birthday telegram delivered to my grandmother  by Western Union.