Postcards from Phoenix: Tale of a (finally successful) mission

I begin writing this on a trip home from… I suppose you could say around the world, but it doesn’t matter because it will all become apparent in due time. I essentially departed Sydney (where I live) and visited the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe. I am in the middle of trying to migrate my blog from WordPress to Astro and I don’t know what I am doing, but I’ve been telling people that it’s kind of the whole point. 😆 I didn’t want to let that project get in the way of my writing, so I’m doing my best to still get into some kind of writing groove while I have a mess of Terminal windows, running processes, and code open in my code editor.

I decided that this story is the best way to sort of kick off writing about my travels. It’s only tangentially related to the travel itself but feels less daunting to approach. It’s also hilarious, so let’s dive in.

The mission seemed simple enough: Send my friend Mitch some postcards on my travels, as he’s creating a website for postcards that he collects. I haven’t sent postcards for a while and haven’t requested them unless my friends have offered to send me one. This made me realise how novel things like this are—receiving a postcard from a friend feels personal, especially when many of us are used to watching what people post on social media. It brings back something that feels a touch more personal than sending your friends and family a few messages and photos while on your travels. (All hail the group chat, I guess.) I did feel a slight pressure to at least choose some artsy, nice postcards, and nothing too generic, because I think postcard choice is also a reflection on yourself.

My first stop was my beloved Phoenix—the city that puzzles people as to why I like it. (It’s a feeling; it’s the people; it’s not the place.) I had knocked out a good portion of the tourist attractions last year, and I aimed to find a postcard that had a cactus or a desert in it. Despite not having any tourist attractions to tick off, I assumed it would be easy to find a postcard at USPS (the post office), or if not, then according to what I searched online, probably a pharmacy or a general store.

Those of you folks who live in the States will probably raise an eyebrow as to the possibility of finding a tourist-ish postcard in a post office… or perhaps it depends which post office. But hey, I grew up in Australia where post offices have all sorts of supplies other than mailing envelopes and bags and boxes. You can find travel accessories in there, as well as greeting cards, postcards, and miscellaneous gifts and gadgets. I figured a post office would have what I need. I debated walking or getting a Waymo (the self-driving cars I thoroughly enjoyed last time), but my friend Alijiah was going to pick me up and show me around and we were prepared to do a hike, so I just asked if we could stop by a post office.

The post office we stopped at had the most rudimentary of supplies, and the shelves looked pretty run-down. I waited in the queue to be served by a member of staff. I asked for a postcard and the staff member went to the back and we didn’t see exactly where she went. Alijiah wondered if she would come back with a selection of postcards. I sincerely hoped so. She came back with something far more underwhelming. It was a mostly blank postcard, save for a postage-stamp-sized image of a mallard duck in the top right corner and the cheesy text “USA forever”. I’m used to there being a print or a picture on one side of the postcard, and space for an address on the other, but this was completely blank on one side.

I heard Alijiah murmur, “…that’s not a postcard” while I asked for an international postage stamp, not wanting to hold up the queue but still utterly confused as to why they didn’t have “normal” postcards. I mean, what’s a normal postcard anyway? This certainly isn’t what people think of when you use the word “postcard”.

At this point it was too late to refuse the postcard, and I was also worried that I may not be able to find one. I paid for it and the postage, and I stood at one of the common tables and wrote on it with humourous flair, while Alijiah said that we would go find a “real” postcard elsewhere later in the day. I drew a little cactus alongside my message, completely forgetting that the back side was blank and I could have illustrated a much larger cactus if I really wanted. I tossed it in the mailing chute, not before I took a picture of it, just in case it got lost and Mitch never received it. (Spoiler alert: He did.)

Alijiah and I went about the rest of our plans, and decided we’d find a Walgreens or a CVS at some point (since they close late at night), and Alijiah could send the postcard for me once I left, since it was already my last day in Phoenix. I recalled how easy it was to find a postcard in other places I’d travelled to, and I wondered if the more driver-centric nature of a city like Phoenix meant that dedicated souvenir shops were less prevalent. Either way, a quick internet search had implied that a supermarket or pharmacy would have them, so I banked on that.

I had originally wanted to do Piestewa Peak but Alijiah convinced me I was prepared enough to do the more difficult Camelback mountain, which we got to see the sunset for. (I’ll save writing about the hike for another blog post!) We got something to eat and Alijiah phoned up Walgreens ahead of time to ask if they sold postcards. The person on the end of the line responded in the affirmative. Easy. We drove to the closest Walgreens and I was hoping for even the most rudimentary of postcards. At this point it was also bordering on 9:30pm so we would be running out of options if we didn’t find one.

When all we found was greeting cards (great…), one of the staff members at Walgreens was (overly) chatty and trying to help us find a solution, convincing us that we could print our own postcard with a photo and that it would only cost a few bucks. She also suggested purchasing a greeting card and tearing half of it off and mailing that, but literally no greeting card had an ounce of, uh, Arizonan vibes, so that was off the table. I was insistent that we not worry about this mission anymore, because if a pharmacy didn’t stock a postcard, then I couldn’t imagine many other places would at this time of night.

Alijiah didn’t want to give up, as we drove past a Staples and he pointed it out, but I was not only certain it was already shut, but that if it was open, it wouldn’t stock actual souvenir or travel-related postcards. The shop was closed. We walked into a supermarket in the same shopping strip, but it was the same deal—just greeting cards. I debated getting a copy of the day’s newspaper from the front of the store and mailing that to Mitch. It was turning into a mission of “what can we mail Mitch instead of a postcard?” and attempting to get a redemption postcard for the boring one I’d already sent.

I kinda called it at about 10:30pm, not before we peered into the glass of a small service station which had all its lights on, but was closed and didn’t look like it had postcards. It was worth peering in to look, anyway. I decided I’d find a postcard at the airport and mail it from New York (my next stop), even though it didn’t technically come from Phoenix, I still technically sent one from there. I mean, it depends how technical you want to get with this. Alijiah asked if I lived close to Mitch, and that he could mail me a postcard home, to Australia, and I could just meet up and give it to him. His dedication to the mission was too sweet. He went on about how postcards are a lost art, but I think it was what gave us fuel for the mission. To be fair, finding a postcard at the airport was always going to be the backup plan, but I felt like such a loser for failing at checkpoint one—at my first stop on my trip. It did, however, set the tone for postcards for the rest of the trip: I decided I’d do my best to find nice postcards, because dare I say it, the kind of postcard you choose to send a friend is a little bit of a reflection on you (that shitty USPS one does not count, folks), and that if I really was unable to send them from the location or country I was in, then sending them at the next stop would suffice.

I had plenty of time at the airport the following morning, and there were only a few shops in which to purchase souvenirs in the airport. They all had roughly the same paraphernalia, like hoodies, t-shirts, keyrings, and magnets. I’ve become a magnet person now, by the way. I don’t know how many kilograms of the stuff I accumulated on my holiday, but I bought magnets for my family too. So… the shops had everything you could ever want to bring back for your friends and family. But the one thing they did not have was a darn postcard.

After scouring shop number two, that looked like it had exactly the same stuff as shop number one, I asked the woman at the cashier if they sold postcards. She confidently said they did not, but she said, “This here though, is the next best thing.”

She moved away from the cashier and gestured at a stand I’d caught a glimpse of earlier—a stand of narrow cardboard boxes of something labelled cactus candy.

You’re kidding me. A box of cactus candy is the next best thing to a postcard.

“It comes with a free postcard in it,” the woman said, picking up one of the boxes. “There are lots of designs to choose from. You get the candy and it comes with the postcard, and you can take that and mail it.”

It was indeed a box of cactus candy with a postcard in it. It was even “FREE”, according to the friendly font on the side of the box.

“You don’t have… just postcards?”

I was somewhere between being aghast that I had to spend $13 USD on a box of candy just to get a postcard out of it, and trying to compute exactly what “cactus candy” meant, whether it was candy in the shape of a cactus, or candy that tasted like cactus—lest my brain turned cactus first, which is almost exactly what it was doing in that moment. The lady was lovely, though, bless her. She wasn’t even trying hardcore to sell me the candy. A scene played in my head. It was a scene of me explaining this situation to Mitch and then gifting him the candy, unopened, which included a FREE postcard—that I had hand-selected from a handful of other cactus candy boxes with FREE postcards of mostly medicore images—printed with a montage of cacti, desert flora, and the word “Arizona” visible somewhere, and then seeing his reaction to this story. His potential reaction would likely be after having received my half-baked postcard in the mail. So far, he’d only had a vague idea of how the mission was going.

It was hard not to pass up. I decided I could hold onto the story until I got back home. I would take the candy with me on my travels, keeping it unopened until I got home. To be honest, I am curious as to how the candy tastes. But not curious enough to tear open the packaging. I would continue to send Mitch postcards from other cities and locations, and then he would get his redemption Phoenix/Arizona postcard in a matter of weeks.

This story has me flabbergasted as to how difficult it could potentially be to find a postcard when travelling abroad, though it’s certainly not the case everywhere. When the idea came up when Alijiah and I were in Walgreens, I was not that keen on printing my own postcard, although the idea has me brainstorming creative ways to bring love back to postcards. I initially thought most of my photos aren’t worth printing, but now that I think about it, some of my travel photos would make decent postcards. They aren’t the only way to share travel memories, though. Thank you, Mitch, for sending me on a wild goose chase and inadvertently tickling a creative part of my brain. I hope you enjoy your candy, and your postcard.

P.S. Can I try a piece of the candy? I must know if it is of the finest quality and flavour satisfaction.