Attendant Spittoons

On September 6 of 1917, Alice sent a postcard showing the lobby of Chicago's Grand Pacific Hotel to Mr. Henry Heinks in Eden, Idaho.

This is what she wrote, in blobby once-black ink that has faded to sepia in the 96 years since the nib of a pen siphoned it from an inkwell:

Dear friend,
I rec’d your card a long time ago and was glad to hear that you got home all O.K. I have been in Chicago for almost two weeks some place alright.
from Alice

Next to the one cent stamp, and above the addressee, the words “Post” & “Card” are printed in a green slant of open face type. The top curve of the capitalized “C” is slashed by a weedy dingbat, which is somewhere between older, more florid Victorian swashes and the sleek efficient accents influenced by post-WWI assembly lines.

The front of the card is glossy, and when held sideways to the light, a fine craquelure enmeshes the central photographed image of eight tufted black leather club chairs arranged around the perimeter of an olive green rug. In front of every chair squats a two foot tall shiny brass spittoon, each inner pool of carbolic acid awaiting its gobs of nasty brown tubercular chewing tobacco expectorant.

Two large arched windows on the right hand wall are full of cyan halftone dots and grey skyscraper shadows that hint of big city “some place alright.” Between the arched windows and doors and aspidistra nooks, green marbleized columns shoot up to caps of Ionic gilt curlicues.

No cud-cheeked men wearing blue serge suits sit in the lobby’s solidly comfortable chairs. No clerk is available to ring for unseen bell hops, and no letters or messages nestle in the mail slots behind the front desk. Although white globs of electricity still glow in the chandelier and wall sconces, the only real life left in this postcard is Alice’s faint relief.