A homesick woman, a buy on eBay, a surprising connection

Posted at November 7, 2006

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Suzi Dagney and her husband, both retired military, have been all around the world.

They’ve lived in Spain, set up housekeeping in Sicily, sent the children to school in Japan. So it was no wonder that one day Suzi got to thinking about home – specifically, her hometown of Mosiertown, Pa., population 42.

She was bored; she had a computer. She Googled.

She got a surprise hit on eBay – a man in Michigan was selling a picture postcard dated 1916, with a scene of cows in a pasture by still water and the legend: “Beauty spot near Mosiertown, PA.”

Suzi called her husband, Mike. I want this postcard, she told him, this is from home. I want this postcard.

Boy, you must be bored, said the m ister, but he bought it for $4.45 and, four days later, it arrived.

Suzi admired the cows and the water, then turned the postcard over to read the message on the back. She read it again, aloud, just the other day.

“It says, Dear Sister, Harold is better but still has new spots breaking out.

“I think,” Suzi said, “he must have had the chicken pox. Now when I read that, Harold, I have a great-uncle that was named Harold. So I thought that was rather strange. Then the next sentence is Fay has one on his chin and I have one on my arm. Then it says Hope you folks didn’t get it.

“And then it says Were you to the fair? And here comes the real funny part: I canned 3 cans tomatoes, 4 tomato preserves and 3 cans pears this week, made 2 gal of tomatoe pickles. Then it says Washed twice besides the other work don’t feel a bit good this morning. Then it says From Edna and that was my great-grandmother.”

Suzi’s postcard truly was from home. Dear Sister was her great-aunt Florence, who was married to Kay Brown. Edna was Edna Mosier Baer, who was married to Fay. Harold was Edna’s son, who was brother to Suzi’s grandfather, who shares a birthday – Nov. 9 – with Suzi’s husband.

The postcard had been mailed on Sept. 1, 1916. Suzi can’t figure out how it got to Michigan because the previous owner won’t answer her e-mails and, most important, Great-aunt Florence never threw anything away.

So Suzi felt herself pretty lucky.

And she was. She played the number 1916 in the lottery the next day and won $2.

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