Memphis and a steamboat adventure

I must say it has been an adventure to find any information about the steamboat pictured in this beaufiful card. I could make out the name on the picture - "Island Queen" - but the information found in the Internet was quite confusing. It seems there was an "Island Queen" operating from 1905 to 1922 in round trips between Cincinatti and Coney Island. She was consummed by fire in 1922. In 1925, a second "Island Queen" was built and resumed the previous trips. In 1947, her fuel tanks exploded, killing 19 persons. And after it, there was no obvious record of another steamboat named "Island Queen", although the picture seemed quite modern. After a bit of research, I concluded that the steamboat in the picture is an excursion steamer, a part of the Memphis Queen Line fleet, operating nowadays.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to sail on such an amazing steamboat? It must be an amazing experience. I would love to visit Memphis and the Mississipi river one day...

The card was sent to me by leni.

Source: wikipedia, http://www.ragtime.nu/islqueen.htm, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kycampbe/memoriesislandqueen.htm,

http://www.steamboats.org/traveller/lower-mississippi-river/memphis.html

Merry Christmas!

Cards in the Mail wishes all of you out there a great Christmas and a very Happy New Year. May you see all your dreams come true and find hapiness. And, of course, may your mailbox be always full of extraordinary postcards.

Have a wonderful hollyday season. ;)

Picture: taken from the Internet.

My sad little house...

No, this is not a postcard. It's a picture of my house taken by my neighbour.

I live near a small brook (water stream) that was mostly dry. But on the night of the 15th of December, a waterspout in the northen side of the island caused floods on several places. The brook that ran in front of my house rose 3 metres (~9 feet) and took half the property. It happened in a few minutes and we had to run from the house, in the middle of the night with the rain pouring down on us. We actually thought the brook was going to take the house and our lives. Fortunely, it was just a scare and of course a few material damages. Nothing we can't replace. The only bad thing is the fact that we have to move now. It's not safe to live here anymore. But we are still counting our blessings. There where other families that lost everything. Their houses, their clothes and furnitures, their hole life. And that's terribly sad.

But life goes on, and we, terceira islanders, are survivors.

Anyway, I am currently packing and busy, busy, busy.

Mail damages...

I am usually a lucky girl, specially with all things related with mail. I rarelly loose any cards and mine usually arrive well at other people's mail boxes.

But this time, bad luck rang my door bell and left this at my door step. This is the sort of thing that makes me very angry. This envelope, sent to me by edward, from Taiwan, arrived a while back at my mail box looking like this. It seems it caught a bit of rain, although it arrived dry. It also had a stamp missing.

The two cards inside where damaged too. One of it was glued to another. It was a beautiful bridge card for ny bridge collection.

Unfortunely, I'm sure I'm not the only one with such problems. If any of you want to share your story, send me an e-mail and I will post it.