Unusual 1913 Iowa Falls Real Photo Postcard with Comic Political Caricature and Emigrant Letter.

Bizarre in Iowa Falls

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Real photo postcard from 1913 showing a comic figure identified by placard as “B.C. Busby,” seated at a street corner with legs dangling into floodwater. The figure wears patched trousers, a bowler hat, and a false mustache, and appears to be a stuffed dummy rather than a living person. A bottle at his side reinforces the trope of the drunken tramp, a popular vernacular motif. A fishing pole rests in his hand, comically suggesting an attempt to fish in the standing water left by the “Great Flood of 1913,” a devastating series of storms and levee failures that inundated large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and the Midwest, killing more than 650 people and causing unprecedented property damage.

The postcard’s verso contains a note from “Annie” to a correspondent in England, noting: “This is a snapshot taken in the Street while the bad weather was on.” She comments on the abundance of work in America compared with England (“I would not work in England. There is plenty of work Tom could do and make heaps of money”), recounts attending a performance of The Taming of the Shrew, and apologizes for brevity owing to lack of time.

Price: $75.00