Postcards from the edge of time Bar Harbor man shares snapshots of state’s history in new book, ‘Bygone Coastal Maine’

Earl Brechlin has done a lot of living in his 49 years. The newspaper editor, registered Maine guide, and College of the Atlantic adjunct faculty member has paddled the 16-mile Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race and camped out in subzero weather to reserve a Chimney Pond bunkhouse.

But for real thrills let’s talk penny postcards. Old ones, from his grandparents’ era, showing quaint lighthouses and bathing beauties smothered in itchy woolen swimwear.

“Many people who like antiques can’t go out and buy an $80,000 highboy,” he said during a recent interview at his Bar Harbor home. “But they can buy a couple of postcards.”

And buy he has after first spying some classic old cards in an antique shop. Eventually he visited the sprawling antiques market at Brimfield, Mass., where he sifted through thousands of cards.

“The first day, I found the $6-a-day guy,” Brechlin said, alluding to the fluctuating prices of the erstwhile penny postcards, “then the $4 guy, and finally, I found the $2 guy. The cards were all the same.”

Before long, Brechlin, who also deals in antiques, had filled albums with 900 postcards. Now he estimates his collection totals about 2,500 cards. The earliest ones were printed in Germany during the golden age of penny postcards, 1900-1920.

Brechlin has just shared his passion for postcards in a third book of the hand-tinted treasures. Published by Down East Books, “Bygone Coastal Maine,” which sells for $12.95, is aimed at tourists and locals alike, and features 115 cards showing landmarks from Kittery to Camden. (Brechlin admits more easterly attractions were jettisoned for marketing reasons.)

He found a receptive audience at the Camden book company, which already had published his hiking and paddling guides to Mount Desert Island. Its staff liked his plan for a “Bygone Bar Harbor” book, published in 2002, followed by “Bygone Boston” in 2003.

A fourth volume, “Bygone Backwoods of New England,” is due out next year. Like the others, this book will feature postcards from the author’s collection; private collectors and institutions will supply the rest.

Brechlin realizes that unlike other vanished cultural icons – seen any souvenir matchbook covers or ashtrays in restaurants lately? – postcards have persevered.

“Postcards let people brag where they’ve been,” Brechlin said. “You go to a place that you love and you’ve got a piece of that in your hand.

“You really get a sense of how people lived by looking at postcards,” he continued. “The scenery [such as Sargent and Cadillac mountains, visible from his home], is still the same, but the people in old dresses really date them.”

Brechlin, who grew up in Meriden, Conn., has been the editor of the Mount Desert Islander since its inception in 2001. The paper, owned by Ellsworth American publisher Alan Baker, shares newsstand space each week with The Bar Harbor Times, which Brechlin formerly edited.

His journalistic experience is written all over “Bygone Coastal Maine,” from the lively preface, to the snappy photo captions. Card no. 115 shows a “girl and buoy” on the Maine coast, a view which Brechlin says was painted on; only the clouds are real.

“It is amusing to speculate whether or not this card [of a woman waving to the camera] was considered extremely risque when it was first printed,” writes Brechlin.

Other views show Camden’s Main Street, with a moving streetcar, the midway at Old Orchard Beach, and what is arguably the prettiest town in Maine, Wiscasset.

A dramatic scene of a 1905 train wreck near Head Tide may be Brechlin’s favorite. Because of their widespread collectability, such cards are widely sought by collectors, a small army of whom are buying and selling their wares on eBay. (Brechlin purchased the cover view of the Pemaquid Point Light through the online auction house.)

The author’s personal touch is stamped on all three of his “bygone” books, especially in each volume’s introduction. His dedications include tributes to his wife, Roxie, a kindergarten teacher; his twin brother, Carl, who sparked his interest in “deltiology,” the scientific name for the collection and study of postcards; and to “Mom. Look what you started!”

The author, inspired by his grandfather’s first cousin, the late Gotts Island author Ruth Moore, has other books in the works. He’s already penned two chapters of “The Great Maine Novel,” a Maine guide adventure story set “up north.”

But writing it probably won’t be half as much fun as the months he sat down each night looking backward through the prism of penny postcards.

“Bygone Coastal Maine” is available at bookstores or directly from Down East Books at 1-800-685-7962 or www.downeastbooks.com. Dick Shaw can be reached at 990-8204 and rshaw@bangordailynews.net