Title: Postcard with Oranges

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Folklore

• English

• Germany, United States

Informant Data:

• The informant, who prefers to be anonymous, is a member of the Dartmouth College Class of 2018. She is from the northwestern part of the United States. This was collected on November 12, 2017.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: This story is about a relative of the informant who left Germany and lived in multiple countries before finally settling in the United States.

• Cultural Context: This reflects the common theme of people leaving their home countries in search of a better job and/or life.

Item:

• Growing up, the young woman knew she would one day have to leave the small German town she called home to find a more profitable job and start her own life. Shortly before she was to leave for work in France, the young woman received a postcard from a friend who had been traveling abroad; they postcard had images of oranges from Florida on it. “One day,” she thought, “I will live in Florida and see the oranges for myself”. Her wish came true, though it was many years and many places in the making. After working in France, the young woman lived in England where she met her husband. The couple lived in few places before she remember her vow all those years before, and they finally settled in Florida, where the oranges from that postcard greeted her.

Informant’s Comments:

• The young woman knew she would eventually have to leave because there were so few job opportunities in her very small German town.

Collector’s Comments:

• This story was especially interesting because it shows the power a single image can have on a person. There are so many places in the world, and an image had stuck with this woman and caused her to remember and pick a specific one.

Collector’s Name: Hannah Pinkerton ‘19

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal folklore, immigration, postcards, Germany, United States