A postcard from New Orleans arrived one day in the mailbox of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga freshman James Hill.
He’d never met the sender.
On the front was a picture of Jackson Square. On the back, written in tight cursive, was a single sentence: “Running late to the train, but greetings from the Gulf Coast!”
It wasn’t a mistake. The postcard was the latest in a series from a pen pal Hill calls his “vagabond.”
“He’s always traveling,” Hill says. “Whenever he’s somewhere new, he sends me a postcard.”
How Hill, a 20-year-old from Jasper, Tennessee, came to receive postcards from someone he’d never met is unusual in the digital age.
At a time when social media and public chat channels offer endless opportunities for instant connection, Hill went old school and cast a wide net for pen pals – not the kind who send text messages at any hour but those who take the time to sit down with pen and paper and write a letter.
“I have seven siblings, so when I moved into my dorm, it got really quiet,” says Hill, who doesn’t have a roommate. “It was nice at first, but then I thought, ‘It’s too quiet.’ I had to open the window to let the traffic in.”
The sudden silence of dorm life took some getting used to, Hill says.
“It can be difficult to meet people in college, and sometimes, you just want someone to talk with,” he continues. “Back home, my little brother would talk my ear off while I was trying to do my homework, telling me about his day. I missed that. So it’s nice to have that extra bit of conversation, even if you’re not physically talking with the person.”
An old-fashioned idea
Hill even went analog in his first attempt to recruit a pen pal, taping postcards he’d bought at a secondhand bookstore in Chattanooga to the doors of his dorm neighbors rather than posting an appeal online.
Within two days, someone had taped a reply to his door – but there was an amusing hiccup.
“The first person who responded thought my name was Matt because I’d written it so illegibly,” Hill says. “I tried doing a fancy cursive. I didn’t have the heart to correct her. She still thinks it’s Matt.”
From there, Hill posted flyers throughout campus and continued his search on Reddit, a community-based social media site. When people replied, he sent them a homemade flyer with his mailing address for them to tack to a bulletin board or wall.
Today, about a dozen individuals living in Canada, China, England, Slovakia and elsewhere are among his pen pals.
His vagabond, whose postcards began unsolicited from the East Coast and last arrived from the West Coast, stands out among the rest. Hill can only speculate how the person obtained his mailing address.
“His first one said, ‘Hey, I’m out and about,’ and then they kept coming.”
Hill is slightly more loquacious when writing someone for the first time, but not by much. His first missive might consist of three or four sentences describing one of his hobbies or inviting the stranger to share something they enjoy.
“It doesn’t have to be serious because you’re breaking the ice,” he says. “Once you do that, they’ll share their life story or tell you all about something they like to do. One of the more interesting things someone told me was that they lived near a community of Amish.”
More than letters
Before long, letters can turn into exchanges of small items. When Hill learned that a new pen pal liked Winnie the Pooh, he sent a pressed penny featuring the honey-loving bear. When he opened their next letter, it contained a sheet of paper with coin rubbings from the sender’s entire pressed penny collection.
Another pen pal noted that Hill is a fan of “Doctor Who.” Using her art skills, she created a homemade postcard featuring a painting of the TARDIS, the time machine and spacecraft from the long-running British television series.
Hill and his pen pals have also traded artwork, although he admits his own creations are a bit simpler.
“I do what I call ‘Bob Rosses, but in crayon,’” he says.
His favorite item to exchange, however, is something called a vinyl card – a postcard that doubles as a miniature record, grooves and all.
“They were very popular in Cuba during the embargoes,” he says of the postcards. “It has just enough room for a stamp, an address and a little message. And it tells you about the artist and their music.”
These small trades communicate just as much about a person’s interests – and help build friendships – as the letters themselves. But Hill notes that not everything can be mailed in an envelope. Bottle caps, even flattened ones, are a no-go, for example.
The appeal of pen and paper
Hill seems drawn to the tactile nature of writing letters, something he finds missing in emails and text messages. Instead of composing messages on a computer, he writes them on a 1969 Singer typewriter made in Holland – a birthday purchase that cost him $60, a bargain compared to the price of the newest iPhone.
“I could write letters on my PC, but it doesn’t feel the same,” he muses. “You don’t get that gratifying ‘tap’ when you press a key or ‘ding’ when you hit the carriage return.”
When Hill addresses a postcard, he first sharpens his pencil, which is painted to resemble a cigarette.
“They’re great for parties because you can hold one in your mouth and no one bats an eye,” he says.
Even the stamp gets personal attention. If Hill learns that a pen pal is in the U.S. Army, for example, he’ll affix an Army stamp to the envelope. For a time, he favored stamps featuring Hank Aaron, another of his personal favorites.
It’s all part of fostering a connection and letting the recipient know he likes learning about their interests.
Sometimes, however, Hill encounters the same obstacles people face in digital communication and everyday conversation. When writing someone in another country, for example, he often has to rely on their knowledge of English.
Communicating across borders can also require a bit of caution. When writing to a friend in China, Hill says he chooses his words carefully. Asking about what she eats, what school is like and what sports people watch or play might seem harmless, but he’s aware of the level of government surveillance in the country.
Still, Hill remains optimistic. He says it wouldn’t bother him if a government official opened and read one of his letters.
“They’d get to learn about me, too,” he says.
A slower conversation
For Hill, writing letters offers something modern communication rarely does: time.
Online messages often carry the expectation of an immediate reply, he says. Letters remove that pressure, stretching conversations across days or weeks and giving each response room to breathe.
“With the internet, communication is instant. You’re expected to answer right away,” Hill says. “Writing letters is more like a slow conversation where you can think out your answers.”
Sometimes that extra time even changes the way he responds.
“Someone might ask me, ‘What’s your favorite color?’ I might say, ‘Yellow.’ But if I had time to think about it, I might say, ‘Golden-hour yellow.’ That’s when you can see the dust on the window.”
Even opening a letter can become part of the ritual.
Hill says he sometimes waits until he returns to his dorm room so he can use a letter opener he bought for $4 at the campus store. Other times, he lets a small stack of envelopes accumulate until the weekend.
“I’ll have a little pile and wait until Saturday,” he says. “Then I’ll open one, respond, and move on to the next one.”
For Hill, the practice adds “a bit of happiness” to everyday life.
“I’ll go into a store wanting to buy something, but I don’t want to splurge, so I’ll get a postcard,” he says. “Or I’ll go to the mail room not expecting anything and – boom – there’s a postcard waiting for me. It’s made life more enjoyable.”
Hill’s letters have already traveled from down the hall in his dorm to places as far away as China and Slovakia. As his correspondence stretches farther across the globe, he says he’d someday like to strike up a letter exchange with a prisoner – with one caveat.
“Nothing too violent,” he says.
And if his vagabond ever settles down and provides an address where a reply can reach him, Hill says he’ll introduce himself for the first time.
Until then, he plans to keep sending postcards and letters out into the world, letting the conversations develop at their own pace.