It’s possible I’m getting swept up in DNC fever.
As a journalist, I’m paying extra attention to it for sure. But as a Denver native whose father is an historian, I appreciate the pomp and spectacle the event will bring, as well as the ground-breaking significance of a black candidate, and I like to imagine what things were like a hundred years ago at the last Democratic convention held here.
I guess that explains why I shelled out $50 for a century-old postcard with a black-and-white picture of an electric sign depicting a woman handing the key to the city to a donkey.
I bought the postcard on eBay, but it was sold by Foxy Hawpe, who used to run Foxy’s Antiques on South Broadway and now sells only online.
Foxy is in the process of selling off eighteen albums worth of old Colorado postcards that she’d had for years. Among the stash were cards from the 1908 convention, and the first one sold within two hours of being posted on eBay, she says.
She thinks the one I bought may have been her last.
But Foxy is sad that a lot of Denver’s great historians and keepers of the past are themselves passing away; it seems like one goes every week or month, she says.
Hopefully,some of what Foxy is selling will help us remember.
P.S. Don’t tell my wife I spent $50 on a postcard! – Jonathan Shikes
