A gift from Ben Gillig and his family, this little gem is one of the stranger pieces I’m come across recently. It’s a tiny papoose attached to a piece of thin cardboard. There’s also a small paper shipping label of sorts hanging off of it which reads “Greetings from”, after which it has been stamped “Blue Hole, Castalia, Ohio”. And speaking of stamps, the shipping label also has a spot marked “stamp”, although I really don’t think you could just pop this thing into your mailbox and they would ship it for you. But who knows?
Stranger still are the words printed on the back of the card:
To say I haven’t had time to write
Sounds like a good excuse
But that’s the truth
And so
I’ll say hello with this papoose
I’ve done a little bit of research and have yet to find any connection between the Blue Hole and Native Americans…or papooses, for that matter. In fact, of all the Blue Hole memorabilia I’ve collected (and seen) over the years, this is the only one with a Native American theme. The piece doesn’t have a date on it, but it looks pretty old. So maybe back in the day, people exchanged tiny papooses as a way of saying “sorry I haven’t written”.
Finally, as much as I adore this piece, I don’t feel like I can trust it: it refuses to look me in the eye.
To see the Blue Hole Papoose in its new home at the Strange and Spooky Museum, visit the Roadside Oddities page.
