Greetings from Riverhead: How one e-Bay auction inspired a Jamesport man’s collection of vintage postcards of old Riverhead

Ron Schmitt recalls the first time he happened upon the e-Bay auction that led to a years-long passion for collecting old post cards depicting the Riverhead of yesteryear.

“Greetings from Riverhead, Long Island, New York” proclaimed the colorful card that caught Schmitt’s eye one day in July 2002. He placed the winning bid — $4 — purchased a money order at the Aquebogue post office and sent it off to the seller in Roanoke Heights, Virginia.

Soon, the card arrived in the mail, and Schmitt was smitten. For Schmitt, it was the beginning of two decades of searching the internet for vintage Riverhead postcards. Over time, Schmitt amassed a collection of more than 60 cards. Each card is carefully stored in a cellophane sleeve, into which is also tucked the money order receipt memorializing the purchase.

At his Jamesport home, seated on the deck overlooking his immaculately kept backyard, Schmitt slowly removes some of the postcards and receipts from the album that holds his collection. His fascination with the cards is evident, even after so many years of owning them. He enthusiastically points out features of the town depicted in the drawings and paintings on the front of the post cards, some of which date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries — his first purchase, the “Greetings from Riverhead” card is actually one from a more recent era, the post-war 1940s. Many depict buildings or structures that are now relics of a bygone era: the water tower in Grangebel Park, the Capitol Theatre on West Main Street, the old jail, the race track at the old fairgrounds.

Generally, the post cards were sent by people hailing from far and wide who were visiting or passing through Riverhead. The long-faded ink and sometimes indecipherable penmanship makes reading the brief personal greetings scrawled on the opposite side of the cards difficult. The notes to relatives back home or friends the sender hasn’t seen in a while often provide a tantalizing glimpse into an era that’s hard to even imagine in today’s age of instant communication and selfies. They harken back to a time when travel and communications were painfully slow, and a person’s mailing address might consist simply of the town, county and state, like this one from Schmitt’s collection postmarked 1911: “Mr. Chace Horton, Altman, N.Y., Oswego Co.” The sender, identified only as “E.B.S” informs Horton that “L.I. is a fine place.”

As Schmitt relishes in the local lore. spread out on the table before him, his love for his adopted home town is evident. The Indiana native met his wife of 61 years while stationed at Gabreski Air Base, after serving overseas in the Air Force. Lillian Bulak grew up on a potato farm in Jamesport. The couple bought an acre of farmland from her father Joseph Bulak and built the home that is today surrounded by a vineyard. After his discharge from the Air Force, Schmitt went on to a 31-year career in the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office in Riverhead and has long been involved in community affairs— the Riverhead Lion’s Club, the Riverhead Republican Committee, the Riverhead Town Recreation Committee and Heidi’s Helping Angels.

Schmitt hasn’t bought a vintage Riverhead post card in a while. He hasn’t found one that isn’t already part of his collection. Along the way, there were a couple of post cards he wasn’t unable to acquire, he says, because he was out-bid by another local collector whose name escapes him — “a lady at the Riverhead library,” he says.

After investing about $550 into his collection, Schmitt isn’t sure what to do with it at this point in his life.

“If somebody wants to buy them, I’ll sell them,” he says. He’s not looking to make a profit, he says. “If somebody wants to give me $500 for it, they can have it.” (Interested persons can send Schmitt a note.)

In addition to the postcards, Schmitt has also collected other Riverhead memorabilia by way of e-Bay auctions, items like a slim volume of corporate and community history published by the defunct Riverhead Savings Bank in 1972, the centennial anniversary of its charter.

“My kids don’t want any of this stuff. They said they they’re not interested in it,” Schmitt says. But for him, “It was a fun hobby.”