ebay purchase has special message

Harriet Hubbard was Christmas shopping when she got a gift she’ll never forget.

“Steve and I have a hard time buying for each other,” she said of her husband, “so I’ve started buying him memorabilia.”

She was shopping online with Ebay when she found a postcard of Springdale. She ordered it, and when it arrived she opened the package, read the decades-old message on the back, and put it down.

And then. Then, she did a double take.

“I realized that was my mother’s signature,” she said.

The card is addressed to a Miss Marjorie Van Hyning in Fort Madison, Iowa. The message reads, “This card shows the home of the mayor of Andalusia. I will send more cards later and also write. Try and write in the meantime. I know I can get you some cards from the Eastern states. I lack a lot of the Western ones. Louise.”

Without telling him what she suspected, Mrs. Hubbard showed the card to her brother, John Jay. He drew the same conclusion.

The one-cent postage stamp says “for defense,” which makes them think it was mailed during World War II.

Their mother, Louise Gause Jay, graduated from Montevallo, and moved to Andalusia in 1940 to work as a home demonstration agent.

They have not been able to find anyone who knows the woman to whom the card was addressed, but wonder if she was a school friend.

“We’ll never know for sure if she wrote this, but we believe she did,” Mrs. Hubbard said.

Among the gems she’s found online were postcards for her husband from his hometown of Centreville, and a commemorative Coca-Cola bottled in Andalusia.