Date: June 1, 1980
Age: 3
The mountains here may be pretty but this town is really a tacky tourist trap. We did have a nice room though, overlooking the river.
Love, Mommy and Daddy
Love, Mommy and Daddy
This is obviously another postcard from this same trip. I need to look at this string of postcards a bit more closely, but I may have been on this vacation, which I think started in Disney World and wound its way through the states until we reached my grandparents in Ohio. This must have been one hell of a long trip.
This is one of those times where the postcard isn't going to provide any further insight into my relationship with my dad. I don't know much about Gatlinburg, so I checked it out on Wikipedia to understand why my dad held such disdain for it. At first glance, it looks like a town rich in Civil War and Native American history, and it borders the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So what's so wrong with that?
It also used to be home to a Ripley's Believe it or Not and other fixtures such as an arcade, haunted house, and grandiose souvenir shop. Tourist trap, indeed. Yet in 1992, a fire consumed all of these. Had my father only visited in 1993, he may have a very different outlook on Gatlinsburg.
Finally, I managed to do enough poking around and figured out how to put a picture in the header of the blog. It's a photo detailing the back of a postcard I have in my collection from 1950, that either my grandmother or great-grandmother sent to my dad from Farmington, Maine. I figured if I was calling this project "Cancelled Stamps," it's best to show one. Kinda cool, eh?
This is one of those times where the postcard isn't going to provide any further insight into my relationship with my dad. I don't know much about Gatlinburg, so I checked it out on Wikipedia to understand why my dad held such disdain for it. At first glance, it looks like a town rich in Civil War and Native American history, and it borders the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So what's so wrong with that?
It also used to be home to a Ripley's Believe it or Not and other fixtures such as an arcade, haunted house, and grandiose souvenir shop. Tourist trap, indeed. Yet in 1992, a fire consumed all of these. Had my father only visited in 1993, he may have a very different outlook on Gatlinsburg.
Finally, I managed to do enough poking around and figured out how to put a picture in the header of the blog. It's a photo detailing the back of a postcard I have in my collection from 1950, that either my grandmother or great-grandmother sent to my dad from Farmington, Maine. I figured if I was calling this project "Cancelled Stamps," it's best to show one. Kinda cool, eh?
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