"YEARS AGO KANSANS MADE BIG CLAIMS"

A Moment in Time

Kansas Historical Society

A monthly series from the Kansas Historical Society

Around the turn of the century Kansas farmers harvested produce bigger than the imagination. Heavy equipment was needed to can giant peaches; a saw was used to cut an ear of corn; and a couple of onions made a wagon load. Picture postcards document the produce prosperity.

April Fool! The early twentieth-century photographers were participating in the old custom of playing pranks. April Fool's Day is believed to date from the 1500s when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. The change moved January 1 from the old Julian calendar to what is now April 1, establishing a day for practical jokes.

William H. Martin of Ottawa, Kansas, is considered to be the best at producing exaggerated postcards. His work featured huge ears of corn and peaches, a giant rabbit being tracked by a car, and pumpkins uprooting a farmstead.

Martin's photography studio began experimenting with trick photography around 1908. He was so successful that he established the Martin Post Card Company in 1909 and reportedly produced seven million cards the next year.

Tall tale postcards required creativity and skill. A photographer took two black-and-white pictures: a wide shot and a close up. The enlarged image would be cut, placed, and glued over the wide shot to create the exaggeration. Headlines such as "Shipping a Few of Our Peaches" and "Harvesting a profitable crop of onions in Kansas" helped further the flight of fancy.

Considered Western humor, exaggerated postcards were extremely successful in the Great Plains. Their puffery depicted the fertile farming for which many settlers had come to Kansas. They also showed a sense of humor in dealing with disaster in the state.

When a swarm of grasshoppers descended on Garden City in 1935, Frank D. "Pop" Conard had a vision. The photographer made a montage of giant insects with humans and sold the postcards like "hotcakes." A master retoucher, Conard continued to print "hopper whoppers" until his retirement in 1963. Grasshoppers were enlarged to battle a man, fit on the bed of a pickup, and hold up a train.

A large selection of exaggerated postcards is among the collections at the Kansas Historical Society's Center for Historical Research. Researchers of all ages are welcome at the center, which is open 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday at 6425 S.W. Sixth Avenue, Topeka. For more information, call 913-272-8681, ext. 117.