During a few of my successful outings this fall I found pay dirt on the beaches of Avon-By-The-Sea. It's a place I have done well at over he last 15 years or so. I would say every couple of years I hit it right, and usually it has been at night. So this fall, during my exhaustive and at times fruitless searches for bass, I just happened to have run into some really good bites. I was there the other day and thought it was going to go good but it fizzled out in front of me.
That brings to me the above postcard. It's what it looked say 75 years ago? Not that much of a difference of what it looks like today. You see, there is no date on the postcard and even on the back the sender didn't date it. It was sent from the Avon Post Office to the U.S. Naval Supply Depot in Bayonne. I guess a sailor was off or on his leave or vacation where he described
Avon as "This is quite a fishing place..". I checked a similar blank postcard and it didn't have any date on it either. What I did find out is that postcard people use the postal rate as an identifier as to the age of the postcard. So the cancelled stamp on the back cost 2 cents at the time. Looking at the below chart we see 2 cent stamps were around before and right after WWI, went down during the Depression, and then hit 2 cents again leading up to the 1950's. Couple that with this being a linen postcard, which were introduced around 1930-1945 when a Chicago printer started printing on lightly embossed paper with a higher rag content, which made them look like linen rather than paper. This new printing also allowed for more and brighter colors to be used in the coloring of the images. (Info credit HERE)
What intrigued me the most about this postcard, and many, many, like thousands of ones I have seen from around New Jersey at that time, say the 1930- 40's, was that most were credited to "Agreen".
The quad of pics below taken in and round Ocean Grove were all credited to whoever "Agreen" is, or most likely was. His/her images appear on linen postcards taken from all around New Jersey. Most of
them appear on postcards printed by the Star Stationery Company of Newark N.J. I spent a lot of time searching online looking for photographer "Agreen" even thinking his name could be "A. Green", thinking they didn't want all of that of the front of a postcard, but at least they gave him/her some credit. I looked really deep just to find the story of the guy, or maybe the lady, who traveled around just taking pictures of crowd scenes and buildings at well known locations. Postcards were not only used as a way of communication back in the day, but are a snapshot of history and historic places. And most often, these places were captured in their heyday. Just look at the below postcard taken of Asbury Park. The Berkeley still stands, the Monterey Hotel was torn down on November 17, 1963, a day after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That hotel was 6 stories high and had 350 guest rooms. In the 1940's the US Navy used the hotel to house sailors and then as a training school. It re-opened for a short period of time before closing in 1960, three years later it was a dirt lot. And, "Agreen" took that photo as well.
So that brings me to the below postcard. I made it with an image I took during a great days fishing on November 17, 2023. That may be 80 years later than the "Agreen" photo and postcard that sits on the top and bottom of this post. While mine is cool, there's just something about the original that's just better. I wish I had seen his picture before I went out that day as I would have tried to get the angler closer, but that's okay. While the images are different, the scene is the same, and I am sure there are similar emotions consistent between the two, especially if the bass, or maybe the blues back in the day, had the bait pushed in with no where to run.
